


A Medley of Poor Choices

by PerpetualMisperception



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Eventual OT6, Gratuitous TLC, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of past abuse, Michael doesn't know what to do when people are nice to him, Michael doesn't play well with others, Michael-centric, Minor Violence, Moderate Self-Destructive Behavior, No one knows how to use their words, Slow Build, Street Michael, which doesn't even slow them down
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-05-09 08:58:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 52
Words: 174,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5533895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerpetualMisperception/pseuds/PerpetualMisperception
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been a very, very long time since Michael had been this close to someone who wasn’t trying to stab him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely based on the street!Michael AU by yetiokay on Tumblr. First AH fic, first poly ship, because this is what I do when I'm stranded in the middle of a blizzard. I write shameless H/C fluff.
> 
> Happy Holidays!

Michael met Ray first.

It was only after that that his life spiraled completely out of his control.

He was just sort of wandering through the streets. He didn’t usually, it didn’t make sense to waste time and energy like that, but he’d woken up to the sound of a state inspection vehicle pulling up to the shitty abandoned apartment complex he’d been squatting in. He’d had to grab his backpack (packed and ready to go, as always) and bolt out a side entrance.

There was virtually no chance the place would survive an inspection. It had somehow acquired both water and fire damage in its lifetime, a lot of the walls had giant holes in them, and Michael knew for a fact that he wasn’t the only one who’d been using it as a place to stay.

The building itself was a fucking eyesore, yeah, but it had also been a pretty reliable place to hole up for a couple of months now. Michael had been staying in a room no one else could really get to. The floor leading to it had fallen in and the only way to get to the back bedroom of the apartment was a small ledge around a wall. No one else who’d been there was a, small enough, and b, sober enough to shimmy across that thing without it either breaking away underneath them, or them losing balance and falling to their deaths either way.

It was a pretty damn awesome alarm system.

Finding a new place was going to suck, though. And what really pissed him off was that they’d probably just demolish the place and have it sit there as an empty lot. No one wanted to build things in this neighborhood, they just wanted to make empty gestures and hope the place miraculously ‘cleaned up’ if no one had any place to stay.

Now he was probably going to have to find a fucking new place, so he was in a shit mood to begin with, and that was when he saw him.

He was hard to miss, sitting on a bench at an old defunct bus stop in a bright purple hoodie. Michael couldn’t see much of his face, his hood was up and it looked like he was wearing a beanie, but it could not be more obvious that he wasn’t supposed to be there.

Given the fact that he hadn’t already been mugged, he probably hadn’t been there long. But Michael could see a couple of people glancing towards him, muttering to their friends, and before he knew it he was walking over.

“The bus hasn’t stopped here in years, you know,” he said, once he was staring down at the guy, who jumped in surprise at his voice. Clearly he hadn’t seen or heard Michael walk up, Jesus fucking Christ, how oblivious could one person be?

The guy squinted up at him, seemingly a bit blinded by the winter sun over Michael’s shoulder. If Michael had to guess, he’d say they were around the same age. They also both had glasses, but that was pretty much where the similarities ended. Purple Hoodie had dark hair, probably black, from what could be seen peeking out from under the hoodie, dark eyes, and a dusting of facial hair across his jawline.

After blinking up at Michael for a few seconds, he shrugged, dropping his gaze and leaning back slightly against the bench. “Just waiting for my ride.”

“Did they drop you off here and leave? Because that’s a fucking shitty ride.”

Purple Hoodie huffed out a breath of laughter like it surprised him. “Nah, but they might as well have. Gave me shitty directions to where we were supposed to meet up, so you’re right about that. They’re on their way now, but. Might be a while.”

His eyes flicked out towards the street and his shoulders were tense even as he tried to adopt a confident posture and oh, he wasn’t oblivious at all, was he? Just wrong time and seriously fucking wrong place.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Michael swung his backpack off his shoulder, settling it at his feet and leaning back next to him. Looking out, he saw the people who’d been eyeing them turn away, some of them visibly annoyed at his staking a claim.

Michael wasn’t part of any gangs, but people knew him. Knew not to fuck with him. If they left him alone, he left them alone, that was how it worked. He didn’t have much, but he had three knives on him and a gun in his bag if things really went to shit. So far, he hadn’t had to use it, but he wasn’t naïve enough to think he never would.

“I’ll wait with you,” he said quietly. Goddamn bleeding heart. The last thing he needed to be doing was getting anyone pissed at him, but the way Purple Hoodie breathed a sigh of relief straight from his fucking soul kept Michael from regretting it too much.

“Thanks,” he said under his breath, not looking over.

Michael snorted, shoving his hands into his own pockets to try and warm them up. “Next time, get your directions from Google or some shit. Clearly, your friends suck.”

“Boyfriends.” The correction came quietly, like he was half hoping Michael wouldn’t hear it, but also firmly, something defiant in it, like an old frustration.

Thrown for a bit of a loop, but knowing he was being scrutinized for his reaction, Michael quickly shrugged. “Whatever, they still suck at directions.”

The tension that had started to build back up in Purple Hoodie’s shoulders relaxed at Michael’s dismissal. “Not going to say that one isn’t true.” After a few seconds of silence, he looked over, really meeting Michael’s eyes for the first time. “I’m Ray.”

“Michael.” Looking away from Ray’s face and the smile that was beginning to grow there, he noticed a weird rectangular shape in his hoodie pocket, bigger than a phone. “What’s that?”

“Huh? Oh,” Ray pulled out a folded rectangle of pink and black plastic. “It’s my 3DS.” Noticing how intently Michael was staring, he grinned. “Gamer?”

“Sometimes.” Sometimes, at the nicer foster homes, there were consoles. Sometimes he could blend his way into a college party and talk his way into Xbox or Guitar Hero. Sometimes he could remember  _having_  a console, when he was a kid, before everything went to hell. One of the old ones, but he remembered loving it. Fucking unrealistic hobby for him, but it was liberating to do something purely for fun.

Ray made an understanding noise and scooted closer, suddenly a long press of warmth against Michael’s side as he held the DS out, tilting it so they could both see.

It had been a very, very long time since Michael had been this close to someone who wasn’t trying to stab him. He swallowed hard a couple of times, fighting back the heat trying to rise in his face and reminding himself silently ‘boyfriends, he has multiple boyfriends, don’t even fucking think about it’.

Fortunately, the game Ray loaded was one hell of a distraction.

The galloping sound caught his attention first, yanking his eyes toward the screen like he was a damn puppet. His mouth fell open, just a little, as he watched a figure clad in green ride across the screen and the first few notes of music sounded out over the small speakers.

“You okay?” Ray asked, sounding confused.

“Yeah,” voice coming out slightly strangled, Michael cleared his throat and tried again, shoving his hands deeper into his pockets and looking away. “I just think I remember that game. I think I played it when I was a kid.”

He was more and more sure of it, as the music continued and it had been so long since he’d thought of this fucking goddamn game. Legend of Zelda, holy Christ, he was remembering it now. He’d played it over and over, sitting way too close to the shitty TV in his room, eyes glued to the screen. His mom had always said he’d ruin his eyes that way and the beat up glasses he couldn’t go anywhere without kind of proved she’d had a point.

Breathing got a little harder then. Because he avoided the memories, most of the time, they hurt too much. But that music was bringing it all back like it’d just happened. It made him feel small and vulnerable and he usually hated that, but it was kind of in a good way? Like it was the same way he’d felt as a kid, when he’d had no damn clue how good he had it.

“Oh, good.” And then Ray was suddenly shoving the handheld into his chest, forcing him to tear his hands out of his pockets so he wouldn’t drop it. “I’ve started that game a fuckload of times, I’m sick of the beginning, you play it.”

The air was freezing cold and biting at his fingers, but he was gripping the DS so hard he was surprised it wasn’t breaking.

He didn’t say anything, wasn’t even sure he really could through the painful lump that was forming in his throat, so he just started the game.

“You’re good at this,” Ray said after a few minutes of silence.

Michael snorted. “It’s the first level of the game, dude, it’s not fucking rocket science.”

“But it’s been years since you played this game, right? And you’ve never played it on the DS, with these controls.”

“I guess.” Michael shrugged, changed the subject without looking up from the screen. “What were you even doing out here, anyway? Kind of hard to wind up here by accident.”

“We’re actually heading up to New York for a convention tomorrow, but we were going to interview a guy for a position we have open back home. He lives around here. I had to finish something up at the hotel and was going to meet up with them later, but-” he gestured to their current position.

“Boyfriends and their shitty directions?”

“Exactly. I wandered around for a while before giving up, finding my location on Google maps, and calling them. Apparently, they were on the other side of town.”

Jesus Christ, how did someone fuck up directions that badly? “That interview is going to be way fucking later than it was supposed to be.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Ray shake his head. “Not so much. They’d been there a few minutes before I called and were already on their way out. The guy somehow managed to piss  _Gavin_  off.” At Michael’s raised eyebrow, he clarified. “I’ve been dating Gavin for about five months now and I have never seen him actually angry.”

Nodding in understanding, Michael went back to the game. He wasn’t going to have long with it, he wanted to play as much as possible. Ray stayed really damn close to him and kept laughing in that quiet, breathy way he did, like he was surprised each time, while he listened to Michael swear at Navi under his breath.

After a while, Michael didn’t even notice the cold.

He knew he’d played quite a bit, gotten a good distance into the first dungeon, but it still felt like two seconds later when the car pulled up.

When Ray’d said he had boyfriends, Michael had thought that he meant two. He’d never personally seen a relationship like that, but two was a reasonable number of boyfriends to have if you were going for more than one, right?

That said, he was  _not_  expecting four men to get out of that car.

“Ray!” the driver said, stepping out. The only thing Michael was capable of noticing about him was that mustache. Holy shit. “Jesus, how did you wind up all the way out here?”

A ghost of a smile passing over his face before he managed to smooth it out into a blank look, Ray stood and immediately pointed at the second guy who’d gotten out. He looked a lot closer to Ray’s age than the first guy, and had crazy flyaway hair and a huge nose that somehow didn’t look stupid on his face. He made a weird, offended squawking sound and, when he talked, the British accent nearly floored Michael.

“I just told you what my phone said!”

“And this is why Gavin is never allowed to be the navigator on road trips,” that came from the passenger’s side, where a tall, broad shouldered guy was leaning with his arms folded on the roof of the car. He was smiling, but he was also the only person who’d noticed Michael and was just  _staring,_ like he was trying to figure out what he was doing there.

Michael did not like being stared at by people bigger than him. He held his own in fights, but he knew when he didn’t have the advantage of size and tried to avoid that. He really hoped he hadn’t pissed that guy off by practically cuddling with his boyfriend on a bus stop bench.

The fact that the fourth guy to get out of the car was even bigger and sporting a very impressive beard did little to keep him from wanting to bolt, even though his eyes were crinkling in a smile as he looked at Ray.

He wasn’t _scared_ , there were just a lot of them and he didn’t like being outnumbered and he _really_  didn’t want to be the focus of their attention once they stopped greeting each other, which he would if he hung around.

It was pretty easy to slip away, actually, while they were all distracting each other.

There was a moment where he looked down at the closed DS in his hands and thought about the game, thought about how he might legitimately not get another chance to play it. But he shook his head and carefully slipped it into the pocket of Ray’s hoodie while he was gesturing enthusiastically at Gavin.

When was the last time he’d done a reverse pickpocket? Probably never.

The walls of the windbreak around the bus stop had been plastered in ads and graffiti ages ago and were impossible to see through. All he had to do to disappear was wait until there were no eyes on him, step around to the other side, and vanish down the alley it blocked from view.

His whole left side felt colder than he’d thought possible now and his heart clenched in his chest when he heard Ray call his name, confused.

Dealing with people who didn’t live out here was always awkward, not that he did it often. With Ray it hadn’t been, but there was no way that was going to last. They’d have to drive off and leave him eventually and that would have been weird. Talking to them before that would have been even weirder.

It was just easier, this way.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That one encounter probably would have been the end of it if it weren’t for the fact that Fate was a cruel and fickle bitch that conspired against him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I'm genuinely surprised at how well-received the beginning of this story was! I'm glad you all like it so much and hope you will continue to enjoy it as it progresses!

That one encounter probably would have been the end of it if it weren’t for the fact that Fate was a cruel and fickle bitch that conspired against him.

He wandered way, way out of his usual area in his search for a halfway decent new place to stay. Not far enough that he didn’t recognize the area. Not far enough that the people there didn’t know to leave him alone. But far enough that respectable people walked the streets and the people like him kept to the alleys.

It was dark, by then, the shadows long having stretched until they encompassed everything. Late and cold. It would probably have been okay to go back to the apartment complex, there was no way they’d gotten a demo team in that afternoon, but it was too far away for him to bother at that point. And it was best to just keep moving on nights like this, especially when you didn’t have the best coat in the world.

Alleys blocked the chilly breezes that swept through the streets most of the time, but they went right through his clothes like they weren’t even there when they didn’t. It was infuriating, but it was also one of those breezes that brought the sound to him.

“… okay, but Jack. Jack! _What if-_ ”

Michael froze midstep and hated himself for it because he should have just kept walking, but who the fuck else would have a British accent in New Jersey?

He came up to the next turn in the alley and looked down towards the street and it was them. It was _fucking_ them, just two of them, the lanky British guy (Gavin, right?) and the huge bearded guy. They were walking past the mouth of the alley, between streetlights so they were in shadow, but even then Michael could see that Gavin’s face was animated and flushed, either from the cold or alcohol.

Probably alcohol, going from the way he was tripping over himself and the guy he’d called Jack was occasionally reaching out to steer him away from traffic or random lampposts with an amused smile. Then again, maybe Gavin was just completely uncoordinated. He had a backpack over one shoulder that looked heavy enough to seriously contribute to his inability to walk in a straight line, especially if he _was_ drunk.

Michael saw the mugger just a little too late.

Gavin wandered a little too close to the alley and that was all it took. It looked effortless for him to drag the Brit in, to slam him against the brick wall of the nearest building, a knife hovering in a very clear threat near his throat.

Michael was frozen, unable to think or move or do anything but watch. Something was urging him forward, his good sense was holding him back, and his mind was just blank and unhelphul.

They were quiet, Michael couldn’t hear the words being spoken, but the mugger was clearly threatening Gavin’s life and, through him, Jack.

Michael’s first thought on seeing Jack earlier that day was that he never, ever wanted to fight that guy. This remained true, but watching him, the tense way he held himself, the way his eyes never left Gavin… he was pretty clearly a soft guy. He looked like he could tear the mugger in half, sure, but he also looked really, really scared.

Jack tossed over his wallet and phone without a fight. In fact, it was only when the mugger tried to yank Gavin’s backpack off his shoulder and the Brit yelped in alarm and tried to resist that things went wrong.

They went wrong _incredibly_ quickly. Gavin reacted to the pull automatically, likely not even thinking about it, trying to push away. He pushed right into the knife and the mugger swung around with his elbow, nailing him right in the jaw and sending him to the ground hard.

Jack shouted, the mugger bolted, backpack in hand, further into the alley and turned, sprinting down the path opposite Michael.

Gavin seemed okay, already pushing himself into a sitting position with Jack’s help and babbling out words like he had before, but there was a stunned kind of hysteria to them now, “Jack- Jack, Dan’s coat was in there, we need to get it back, it’s important-”

It was then that Michael heard Jack’s voice for the first time. It was deep and stern, but shaking just slightly, “We _need_ to get you checked out. They won’t care, _Dan_ won’t care, you know that. You matter more Gav, you’re _more_ important, Christ. Just breathe.”

Maybe it was the disoriented panic in Gavin’s voice or the concern in Jack’s or a moment of pure fucking insanity, but either way, Michael’s feet started pounding the pavement as he took off. The mugger wouldn’t have gone far, just far enough to make sure no one was chasing after him. He definitely wouldn’t leave his comfort zone. They never did.

Rage was a physical force in his chest.

He didn’t get it, he didn’t _know_ those guys, but.

But Ray had treated him like just a regular person, despite it being totally fucking obvious that Michael was one of the people he should have been scare of. He hadn’t pushed or asked questions, he just gave Michael a chance like it was nothing to hand over a machine that cost hundreds of dollars to someone off the street.

And he’d barely seen him, but Gavin was some kind of force of exuberant energy. Watching him get smacked to the pavement had just felt _wrong_. Like it was something that shouldn’t ever have occurred, he shouldn’t have been, God, cowed or subdued or what-the-fuck-ever.

Even Jack, the huge scary looking one. His obvious concern was the most sincere thing Michael had seen in a long, long time.

Altruism would get you killed out here, no fucking question. But he just ached to make some part of what had just happened better. It was _wrong_ , it shouldn’t have happened to those guys. And it would upset Ray too and Michael kind of owed him. Maybe fucking standing guard over him had been enough to pay back the game, but… but he couldn’t stop _running_.

The cold air burned like needles in his lungs and his legs just plain _burned_ , but he had the benefit of adrenaline and, when he found the guy, he also had the element of _surprise_.

Unfortunately, the first hit didn’t knock him out.

He’d heard Michael, turned, and the solid punch had turned into a glancing blow. And then he was up, his knife was out, and things got a lot more complicated.

Michael wasn’t a stranger to fights, not even knife fights, that wasn’t the problem.

He just really hadn’t wanted this guy to see his face.

Taking out one of his own knives didn’t turn out to be necessary. The mugger had been coming down from an adrenaline high after robbing Gavin and Jack and hadn’t quite had enough time to bounce back before Michael managed to get under his guard and slam a fist into his sternum, then another into his jaw.

He dropped like a rock, which was almost disappointing because two hits was not nearly enough to calm the anger swelling in Michael’s chest.

But he didn’t waste time. The backpack was sitting just a few feet away and he lunged to pick it up. It was heavy and awkward to carry when he had his own backpack on, but he had it.

The mugger’s pockets were filled with wallets, phones, assorted jewelry… It was easy to find Jack’s stuff, though. His driver’s license was enough to find the wallet, and his phone was the one that had a weird selfie of him and Ray and Gavin and the other two pulling ridiculous faces in what looked like a diner.

Michael realized he’d been standing there staring at the screen a little too long when it shut itself off. Shaking himself, he shoved the wallet and phone into one of the side pockets of Gavin’s backpack.

Then he emptied all the wallets the mugger had of their cash and gift cards, shoving them into his own pockets to sort through later. Hey, if he was going to risk mugging a mugger, he was going to take advantage of the situation.

Backtracking showed him he’d actually gone a pretty fair distance from where the mugging had happened, apparently the guy hadn’t been taking any chances. Either that or this mugger’s particular territory was much larger than Michael had thought, which would not be good.

Even though Michael knew the area, he didn’t have it _memorized_ , and he got turned around a couple of times before being able to find his way back.

The flashing red and blue lights were a pretty good indicator that he was in the right place, though.

An ambulance and a cop car were parked across the street. Gavin was visible, sitting on the edge of the ambulance with a blanket around his shoulders. His gaze was blank and distant as he pressed a folded pad of gauze against the side of his neck with the hand that wasn’t clutching tightly at the blanket. The cut couldn’t be too bad, if they were just sitting there, and he looked more like he was in shock than in pain.

Jack was right there with him, standing in front of him with one hand on his knee and the other carefully holding an ice pack to his jaw, where the mugger had hit him. He looked okay too, but still concerned, his entire forehead crumpled with it as he talked to Gavin in a low voice.

Relieved, Michael took a step forward.

Then a cop walked up to them and started talking and Michael hesitated. He’d had a few run-ins with the cops, nothing serious, nothing that meant they should recognize him on sight, but anyone who lived how he did had that instinct to freeze at the sight of the police.

That hesitation was enough because suddenly Jack was nodding and helping Gavin hop down and they were being loaded into the police car and off they went, probably to give their statements at the local precinct.

And Michael was left standing in the mouth of the alley with two backpacks and the makings of an astounding headache.

“ _Fuck_.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates on this are probably going to slow down significantly when I'm not snowed in by myself for days and actually have to return to work. In the meantime, have another chapter! And much, much thanks to everyone who has commented and left kudos, you guys are the shining stars to my terribly weak motivation.

Michael was an idiot.

He owned a lot of things about himself. Kind of had to, after a certain point. That he was an asshole was the biggest one, but the idiot thing was new.

Because only an idiot would spend their limited stolen cash on buying a train ticket to cross state lines to return equally stolen property to a group of people that he had never actually _met_ , with the exception of Ray.

But there he was, sitting on the train, trying to look like he belonged.

He’d wandered most of the night, trying to decide what to do. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to give their stuff back, he did. But he didn’t know where they were staying or how to find them or anything.

Then he remembered what Ray had said, about how they were heading up to New York the next day. For a convention.

Maybe they’d postpone the trip after the mugging the night before, but Michael honestly kind of doubted it. If it were him, he’d want to leave as soon as possible. New Jersey had that effect on people.

Before he’d known it, he was at the train station. His good sense was screaming at him not to waste the money he’d gotten from the mugger on this, but he’d honestly gotten a good bit and… he really just had to, at that point. He was in too deep, there was a tugging in his chest that felt like it was just dragging him along for the ride.

So he bought a damn train ticket and a damn locker to stash his backpack in so he didn’t look like an idiot walking around with two. He almost bought some food while waiting for his train, but it was all stupidly overpriced and he was not that desperate. He’d eaten the day before yesterday, he was fine. And he had a handful of gift cards to a few places now, it would be idiotic not to use them.

Though, again, he was having to own the ‘being a fucking idiot’ thing these days.

But the train was warm. It was warm and had left just after the morning rush and before the lunch rush, so no one had dropped into the seat next to him. His feet ached from walking around for pretty much the last entire day and it was nice to just sit for a while.

About an hour into the ride, he got curious and pulled the backpack into his lap to open it. In the larger compartment was a laptop and a couple of cameras (that mugger would have pissed himself in glee if he’d seen that), and the smaller one…

“The fuck is this?” Michael muttered under his breath, pulling out the tattered fabric. It was… a lab coat? One sleeve was ripped almost completely off and the majority of it was covered in paint splatter and… was that _blood_?

But, sure enough, ‘Dan’ was embroidered on the front of it. There was another coat at the bottom that wasn’t covered in paint and held together by hope, with Gavin’s name. Both had ‘The Slow Mo Guys’ embroidered on the back, whatever the hell that was.

Michael had no fucking clue why the coats were so important that Gavin had tried to hang onto them even with a knife to his throat, but he carefully repacked them and slumped back into his seat.

Soon enough, they were pulling in to the station.

There were masses of people around and Michael clung tightly to the backpack and kept one hand on his back pocket over his wallet until he could get out. That kind of place was a goddamn goldmine for pickpockets.

And then he was out and on the streets of New York.

The buildings were unbelievably tall, there was a staggering amount of people everywhere, and he had no idea where the fuck he was or where the fuck he was going.

This was off to an amazing start.

But he’d come too far to back out now, so he settled the backpack on his shoulders and struck out. This whole thing would have been much easier if Jack didn’t have a _fingerprint lock_ on his smartphone, Jesus Christ.

He wandered for a while, not in a huge hurry. Conventions lasted a whole weekend, he knew, he had time to find it. He learned the streets, started building a vague mental map of the place so he could get around. It was a skill he’d perfected over the years, though applying it to a place that was entirely new to him was something of a shock. Definitely a challenge.

He loved it.

It was nearing on towards evening when he started seeing groups of people in costumes here and there. He grinned to himself. Jackpot.

It wasn’t hard to stalk one of the groups (a Nathan Drake, a Spartan, and a Captain Falcon) back to the convention center.

No, the hard part was going to be _getting in_.

Everyone going in or coming out had a lanyard with a badge around their necks. There were people stationed at the doors checking to make sure everyone going in had a badge.

Michael did not have a badge.

Michael was not going to spend the rest of his hard stolen cash getting a day pass.

Michael was going to do the asshole thing, find another asshole, and steal their badge.

It wasn’t all that difficult to find a pretentious-looking guy that was glaring around disdainfully at everyone coming in and out, muttering under his breath as he smoked way too close to the doors and looking like the convention was making him significantly angrier than his badge was worth. And he’d shoved said badge into his pocket and left the lanyard dangling out, begging to be pickpocketed.

The people at the doors may have raised an eyebrow at Michael’s tattered clothes, but his badge got him in.

He stopped dead just inside the doors, got yelled at, and moved to stand by the wall.

Apparently, the badge had given him passage to Nirvana.

Everywhere there were booths and stands and a few stages and demo areas and they were all about video games. Every single one of them.

Michael found an information booth and grabbed a program and a map. He didn’t know where he was going yet, but he intended to systematically see everything in the whole goddamn center.

The next few hours didn’t even feel like they were part of his life. He felt like a damn kid, like he didn’t have anything to worry about or care about as he drifted through the displays and booths.

He played demos for a couple of games and ducked into a handful of panels. He watched the cosplayers, wondering how in the hell some of them had managed to make their costumes. He browsed the artist booths and did not buy anything, not even the wide leather bracelet with the Triforce on it.

It was intoxicating, wandering around that place, seeing and learning so many things and watching and sharing in the enthusiasm that was practically tangible in the air.

He’d nearly forgotten why he was there when he stumbled across his destination.

When he’d considered the fact that they were at the convention, he figured they were just attendees. That they might have a booth of their own was something he hadn’t even considered.

He wasn’t sure what was _in_ the booth, he’d approached from behind and seen the man with the amazing moustache standing outside the curtain that formed the back of it. Now that they were inside the stifling convention center, he was wearing short sleeves and Michael could see the colorful wall of tattoos covering both his arms.

For a second, he hesitated again, not sure what to do now that he was there. But he was close enough that his sudden stop had caught the attention of the tattoo guy, one of the only boyfriends he didn’t know the name of.

The guy’s entire thought process was completely visible on his face as Michael gave into the inevitable and walked towards him. Michael watched the progression of ‘who is this kid’ to ‘wait he looks familiar’ to-

“You were the one with Ray yesterday.”

Swallowing despite his suddenly dry mouth, Michael nodded jerkily. A few seconds ago, he’d have said the guy looked tired, but his eyes were sharp now. “Yeah.”

“He was worried when you ran off.” His expression didn’t flicker when Michael shrugged awkwardly, not sure what to say to that. “Were you looking for him?”

“No!” And God, why was that so terrifying all of a sudden? He’d wanted to see them, he knew he had, all of them, but suddenly the idea of having to face them, face _Ray_ , was terrifying. Especially if they thought he’d been _looking_ for them, for some reason.

He didn’t understand it at all, but his face was heating and he kind of wanted to run away and the tattoo guy was looking at him differently now, something softer and amused and, Jesus he was just fucking embarrassing himself now, he needed to get out of there.

Swinging the backpack off his shoulders, he all but threw it at the other man. He caught it, surprised, and looked down at it in confusion before his eyes widened and he looked back up at Michael with an unreadable expression.

“This is Gavin’s bag.”

Michael wasn’t sure where all his words had gone, but he just nodded again and fished in his pockets for Jack’s phone and wallet, where he’d put them for safe keeping. Pulling them out, he carefully set them on top of the bag, then shoved his hands back into his pockets to hide both the way they were shaking and the split knuckles on his right hand.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” the tattoo boyfriend said under his breath, but he didn’t seem mad and he wasn’t even looking at Michael, so that was good? Maybe? He shifted his grip on the bag to one hand, shoved the wallet and phone into his own pocket, and swept aside the curtain to peer inside and order, “Gavin, get out here.”

Before Michael could even so much as plan to move, out came Gavin. There was a square of gauze peeking out from under the collar of his shirt and an ugly, dark bruise on his jaw, but his eyes were bright and alert, not distant like the night before, and something in Michael’s chest eased at the sight.

“What, Geoff-” and then Geoff dumped his backpack into his arms. Gavin had the same, uncomprehending stare as his boyfriend for a few seconds before making a strangled sound and dropping to one knee, setting the bag on the ground and practically ripping the zippers off in his haste to get it open.

The first things he checked were those ridiculous lab coats and the second was the laptop and cameras. He looked stunned, his eyes were shining suspiciously.

“Everything’s here,” he breathed, and Michael didn’t miss the way Geoff glanced his way. “Everything, nothing’s missing. Geoff what-?”

“Thank him,” Geoff gestured towards Michael. “He’s the one that brought it back.”

Gavin whipped his head towards him in alarm, but Michael saw the instant he realized Michael was not the one who’d held the knife to his neck and relaxed. He then saw recognition pass over the Brit’s face as well.

“You’re Michael,” he said, getting to his feet. Michael’s stomach did a funny twisting thing when Gavin said his name that he put down to really needing to get something to fucking eat. “You’re Ray’s Michael, yeah?”

Michael had apparently handed over his goddamn voice with the bag because all he could do was shrug.

The grin that broke over Gavin’s face was _incandescent_.

And then he launched himself at him.

It took Michael a couple of terrified heartbeats to figure out that the reason he wasn’t feeling pain was that Gavin had not so much attacked him as he had flung his arms around his shoulders and was… hugging… him.

“Michael, lovely Michael, thank you!”

Michael very carefully tucked his switchblade back into his sleeve and tried to remember how to breathe.

“Don’t assault him, Gav, you’ll get us thrown out.” Geoff was smirking under his mustache, having clearly seen Michael freeze (though presumably having not seen the knife).

Gavin pulled back, clapping his hands on Michael’s arms and grinning down at him. “It is absolutely top you’re here! Ray told us all about you!”

Michael wondered what Ray could have possibly told them about him that was making them look at him like that when they’d only really known each other half an hour.

“Jack!” Gavin called towards the booth. “Come out here, you have to come see!”

“You realize that we have people to talk to out there, right? We can’t actually leave the booth unattended.” Jack came out anyway and wow, he looked tired. But he saw the bright grin on Gavin’s face and the fatigue faded away in favor of surprise. “What’s got you so excited?”

“Look!” Gavin bounded the few steps back over to his bag, lifting it up and practically thrusting it into Jack’s face. “Look, it’s all here, Michael got it all back for us!”

When Jack looked up and spotted Michael, his eyes widened as well. “Ray’s Michael?”

What. The fuck.

Geoff nudged Jack’s shoulder and handed over his wallet and phone. The bearded man stared down at the objects in disbelief. “Oh my God.”

Gavin was nearly bouncing in place. “Right?? Everything’s there, we haven’t lost it at all!” He whirled back around to face Michael, “Ray and Ryan will be back soon, they just popped off to get food. They’ll be so glad to see you.”

Michael had just kind of been frozen in place for the last few minutes, but that kick-started his brain. God, whatever Ray thought he’d seen in him, there was no way he could live up to it. Whatever he’d said to the others, there was no damn way.

And Ryan had to be the last boyfriend. Michael remembered him. He was the one that had looked at him, really _looked_. He was the one that would be able to see right through it all, the one who would look at Michael and know that he wasn’t some kind of gold-hearted Good Samaritan that had just had a run of bad luck. He’d be able to look at Michael and know that he was chasing after one friendly experience, like a druggie chasing a high, that he was as rotten as anyone else out there.

Jack and Geoff were distracted by Gavin’s overflowing joy, which made it incredibly easy to slip away from them a second time.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick note: the chapters may take a little longer to come out now, both because of work and also because they are going to be LONGER, the next chapter is more than double the length of this one, and this one is more than half the word count of the other three put together, so just know that if it takes a while, you'll be getting more to read!
> 
> I love you all, thank you so much for the amazing comments and kudos, I hope you enjoy the chapter! <3 <3 <3

The convention sort of lost its spark after that.

Michael wasn’t really sure what he’d been expecting to happen. They were happy, more than happy, and that was good, that was what he’d wanted. And they’d thanked him and Crazy Gavin had even hugged him and it was all good. It was fine.

So he didn’t really get why his insides felt heavy and twisted.

He wandered back to the station on autopilot, having seen enough of the city earlier in the day to locate it pretty easily. He bought a ticket back to Jersey, because it was a shit hole, but it was a familiar one, and it wasn’t like he’d ever had anywhere _else_ to go.

It was where he was supposed to be. People like him didn’t get to mix with people like that. It just didn’t work.

Michael had never really done anything unforgivable, but he was still a homeless criminal that had dropped out of high school because he’d been hiding from CPS. And putting it like that made it incredibly depressing, wow.

The train didn’t take long to arrive, which was a small blessing, something he felt he was owed at this point.

It was dark and the ride was much too short this time. Soon enough, he was pulling his backpack out of the locker he’d rented, squaring it on his shoulders, and stepping out into the cold.

A snowflake immediately landed on the tip of his nose.

Squinting up at the sky, he saw more flakes gently floating down, getting heavier as the seconds passed.

He groaned under his breath, “Fucking seriously?”

Snow was a nightmare, almost worse than rain. It was freezing cold and then it was freezing cold and _wet_ , which just made the cold even colder and the only way to prevent that was to be indoors and have everything you wanted to keep indoors before the snow could even touch it.

Michael didn’t have that luxury. He was a few hours’ walking distance from the apartment complex, even if it weren’t dangerous there now. He didn’t have much of a choice but to head out into the snow.

He also didn’t have a destination. Moving to keep warm was all well and good when it was dry, but rain and snow were a different goddamn story. You could move all you wanted, but if you were wet, you were going to be cold either way.

A plan. He needed a plan.

Find somewhere sheltered, that was the main priority. He headed towards the part of the city where the mugging had taken place the day before. The alleys there were thin and should be able to keep most of the snow out. As long as he stayed away from the exact area of the mugging, he should be fine.

He was not fine.

Making it there was the easy part. Enough snow had stuck and melted into his beanie, enough had gone down the back of his coat, enough had melted on his face that he was having to huddle just out of sight of the street, hands shoved into his armpits, shivering hard enough that it felt like his bones were rattling.

It would be okay if he could just stick it out until he got dry again. He could figure things out then, but it was too cold to think, too cold to _breathe_ , it felt like inhaling ice water.

Those hours at the convention seemed very far away.

And, of course, that was when the asshole mugger and his buddies showed up.

They must have been following him a while, long enough for them to have positioned themselves to block his escape, one at either end of the alley.

This, Michael reflected, letting a switchblade fall into each hand as he stepped away from the wall, was exactly why he hadn’t wanted the mugger to see his face. They were territorial, couldn’t have someone encroaching on the area they ‘worked’. Some would form agreements with others in the area to help them protect their territory in exchange for protection with theirs.

Those agreements usually fell through, but sometimes they held together and apparently Michael hadn’t been fucked over enough in the last two days, because there they were.

No words were exchanged. Everyone in that alley knew exactly what was about to go down and why.

It was the guy who’d mugged Gavin that made the first move, feeling confident with his buddies backing him up, even though he was not nearly as big. Not much of a fighter, Michael was guessing, given the way he used a large coat to bulk up his appearance and relied on getting the drop on people and threatening them with a weapon when he mugged them. He came in with his knife, easy to see coming and easy to dodge. Michael sidestepped, kicked the back of his knee as he went by and he hit the ground with a shout.

The two buddies leapt into action at that point and everything went to shit very quickly.

Michael was a good fighter. Good with fists, good with knives. He was even somewhat confident when the odds were against him. Normally, he could probably handle this just fine. People tended to underestimate you when you were short.

But the mugger’s two friends were fucking huge and he hadn’t eaten in two days and he hadn’t slept the night before and it was honestly kind of surprising that it had taken so long for his body to punish him for that.

He dodged the first few slashes, taking advantage of his attacker’s mounting frustration to dodge a particularly aggressive move and slip in to draw a long, deep line along the guy’s ribs. It was bad enough to send the thug staggering back with a shout of pain and fury, but it wasn’t lethal and it would take a while for the blood loss to give him an advantage.

It wasn’t good enough. Michael immediately had to jump back to dodge the next guy. Air sang as blades cut through it. He couldn’t dodge them all, had to frantically bring up his hands to smack away the guy’s arms when the knife started getting a little too close for comfort.

His head was starting to feel hot, his breaths stuttering in his chest, and he had to bite down a rush of panic at the sudden rushing of blood in his ears. Eyes unfocusing, he had to backpedal until the world came back into focus to avoid getting gutted.

Not enough energy to keep up his adrenaline, how fucking stupid was that? Adrenaline was supposed to make up for that shit, wasn’t it?

Apparently not for long, though. His empty stomach twisted and the lightheadedness abruptly turned to a throbbing in his temples that he had to grit his teeth through.

He didn’t see the move in time to dodge out of the way of the knee aimed at his gut. Air exploded out of his lungs and his body cramped up in shock and that was that. He was sucking air in, but he was breathing too fast and the air was too cold and on his next dodge he felt the knife graze his ear, sharp pain blooming in its wake as it ripped off his beanie.

He stumbled, staggering back towards a wall only to have to bring his arm up to deflect another strike, one switchblade clattering to the ground. Metal sank into his skin and he ground his teeth even harder, ripping his arm away to dislodge the knife from both his flesh and his attacker’s hand.

A fist flew into his face and his glasses were done for. One lens popped out, jabbing him in the eye just before the fist made contact, and the frames fell, along with his second switchblade.

He hit the ground hard. Glass crunched under a heavy foot and there went all hope of repairing the damn things. Not that he’d get a chance for that.

Scrambling backwards, he only stopped when his back hit a wall. He could see fuck all without his glasses, but he could make out the guy looming over him, knife arcing in the air as he tossed it casually. He knew he’d won, could take his time.

Michael had been screwed for a very long time, but it looked like there was only so long you could put that sort of thing off.

Then again, it seemed like Fate was a cruel bitch to _everyone_ , because running footsteps were the only warning any of them had before the guy standing over Michael was bodily tackled.

There was a startled shout at the interference and the sounds of a scuffle immediately started back up- shoes digging into gravel and scraping on concrete, fists hitting flesh, grunts of pain that all seemed to come from one person that was getting the _shit_ kicked out of them.

Leaning forward, eyes straining, he tried to make out what was going on. He couldn’t see any of it, the alley was so dark and his eyes were so shit that he had to just listen. To be fair, listening seemed to be enough.

After a particularly loud and heavy-sounding smack that was definitely a fist to a face, something heavy hit the ground, then managed to scramble up and vanish, panicked footsteps fleeing into the tangle of alleyways between the buildings.

An enraged yell, it sounded like the guy he’d managed to cut, then that guy was trying his luck with the new one. That fight was over almost instantly. Fast, heavy footsteps told Michael that he charged the new guy, light steps to one side as the new guy dodged. A dull thump as a hand came down hard on a clothed arm, and a hair-raising _crack_ , immediately followed by a scream and the telltale thuds of someone falling several times as they fled.

The actual mugger was already long gone. Michael wasn’t actually sure when he’d left, but it looked like the guy had cut his losses and bolted while his friends were getting the hell beaten out of them. Coward.

And Michael was left alone, mostly blind, in an alley with a guy who’d just kicked the asses of the people who were about to kill him.

He really needed to get his shit together at some point.

The guy was breathing heavily after the fight, which made it easy to hear when he came closer. Michael pressed back against the wall, like maybe he could merge into it if he tried hard enough.

Something brushed against his hair and he flinched badly, shrinking back against the wall, pride be damned.

There was a pause, then a light came on suddenly enough to make him jump.

“Are you alright?”

It… it _sounded_ like Jack, but Michael could make out enough to see that the person who rescued him was _not_ sporting a ginger beard.

“Fine,” he snapped on autopilot, squinting against the phone light that was, thankfully, not aimed directly at his eyes.

A snort. “Yeah, sure. I bet that blood is just for decoration.” He shifted position and glass crunched loudly, making him look down. “Ah shit, that’s where your glasses went.”

Michael tried to muster up some anger about that, but he was just so damn _tired_. He leaned his head back against the brick and stared up at the blur who had rescued him. “What do you want?”

Another pause, then the figure was crouching down, setting the phone on the ground between them with the light facing up, enough to illuminate the both of them.

And yeah, Michael recognized him now that he was so close, and apparently his heart had enough left in it for one more sick lurch. “You’re… Ryan, right?”

“And you’re Michael,” Ryan said pleasantly, those unsettling eyes trained on him. “You really need to stop disappearing, you’re going to give my boyfriends ulcers from worrying about you.”

“Why the fuck do you care?” He hadn’t meant to say that, not really, but the world was spinning and he felt kind of buzzed and that probably wasn’t a good sign, what with the blood loss.

Ryan sort of tilted his head in a way that reminded Michael of very creepy owls. “You protected Ray. You chased down and,” a hand closed against Michael’s wrist and he tried to pull away, but the grip was too strong as it twisted his arm until the back of his hand was visible, “from the looks of it, beat the shit out of the guy who hurt Gavin. Then you tracked us all down at the convention, gave back everything that had been taken, and ran off, without a word, without asking for anything.”

He looked up and those eyes weren’t cold at all. They were warm, like the hand still holding Michael’s wrist, gently now, and felt like they were drawing him in.

“How could we _not_ care?”

There was something in Michael’s throat. Like an amphibian, or an anvil. “You don’t know me,” he choked out. “I’m not what you think I am.”

“I’d bet you’re not what _you_ think you are either.”

There was just a little too much happening right now. It was cold and his face hurt and his arm hurt and his ear hurt and there was melted snow seeping into his pants and he was really, really tired.

World pitching around him in protest, he pulled his wrist out of Ryan’s grasp and braced his arms against the wall behind him to push himself up. He ignored the way his head throbbed, especially the eye that had taken the brunt of the punch, and the way burning pain lanced up his injured arm.

“Thanks for the help,” he bit out. “But I’m good now.”

“You are actively bleeding from three different places that I can see. And _you_ can’t see at all, can you?”

Jesus goddamn fucking Christ, Michael couldn’t deal with this. He couldn’t deal with the one boyfriend he thought would know better being this way. Maybe he’d done a couple of good things in the last few days, but that was not the norm for him. He wasn’t some awesome guy, he was, as Ryan had so helpfully pointed out, half blind and bleeding in an alley. That was _all_ he was, but these guys didn’t seem to _get_ that.

“It’s _fine_ ,” he ground through his teeth, lurching forward and pretending he didn’t feel partially detached from his body. The world might have been spinning around him, but it was hard to tell without being able to see all that well.

Ryan’s footsteps were heavy beside him, the taller (so much taller, why were they all so fucking tall?) man strolling casually in contrast to Michael’s desperate shamble. “Where are you going?” He sounded curious, like he was merely asking for the time.

Every second step sent a knife of pain up his left leg. He must have jacked up his knee when he fell before. “None of your business, asshole. Quit fucking stalking me.”

“You’re calling _me_ a stalker?” Ryan’s voice was filled with laughter. Dick. “Really? We’re going to go there?”

Michael waited for the familiar rush of heat to his face, but it was apparently too cold for even that bit of potential relief. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Seriously,” the other man’s voice had dropped into something a little more serious, “where are you headed?”

But Michael couldn’t even answer that, could he? The place he’d _been_ staying was out of the question. He hadn’t found a new one yet. He was fucked no matter what happened now, with the cold water soaking his jeans and his shoes and his blood still slowly seeping out his arm and down his ear.

“None of your business.”

The footsteps stopped. “Don’t you want this?”

After a brief second of hesitation, Michael turned to see just what the hell Ryan was getting at. The blur that was the other man was holding a smaller blur by a strap.

It took Michael a couple of second to realize he didn’t have his backpack on anymore.

“Give that back,” the words were supposed to be a snarl, but they just came out exhausted. He stepped forward, fingers reaching out for where he was pretty sure the strap was as he tried not to put too much weight on his knee.

Ryan swung the bag out of reach, pressing a palm against Michael’s chest to keep him in place when he tried to follow it. “I will,” he said, in that same low voice. Gentle, but with no give at all. “If you can tell me honestly that you have somewhere to stay.”

It took too long for Michael to even consider lying. A few seconds too long and he knew that Ryan wouldn’t believe him no matter what he said. There was no way he could be convincing, not now, not after a pause like that.

The hand on his chest was warm. It hovered over his heart and Michael wondered if Ryan even realized, if he could feel the unsteady tempo under his fingers.

He let his arm fall to his side, felt his shoulders slump. He was so damn tired.

“What do you want?” he sounded fucking pathetic and he hated himself for it, but he couldn’t even summon the energy to raise his head and put up the pretense of being able to look Ryan in the eye.

The hand moved from his chest to his shoulder, squeezing slightly as the other man stepped closer, well into Michael’s space. He could see his backpack now, the strap resting in Ryan’s hand, but he made no move to grab it or raise his head or do anything but listen.

“Don’t ask me to leave you here.”

And Michael was just- he was just so completely fucking done with all of this shit. He didn’t have enough energy or will or spite left in him to pull away from the hand on his shoulder.

“Fine,” he spat. Fine, he’d go with him. Fine, he’d put up with the pity and humiliation. Fine, he’d let them leave with clear consciences at the end of the weekend, satisfied they’d done something good while he went back to this after having had just enough of a taste of something else to start _wanting_ it.

It was all fucking _fine_.

Ryan didn’t ask if he was sure, didn’t give him a chance to change his mind. He just handed his backpack over and moved his hand around Michael’s back, gripping his other shoulder, like he fully intended to make _sure_ that he wasn’t going to make a run for it by physically walking him to wherever they were going.

If he ran right then, Michael was pretty sure he’d throw up. Which would suck even more than normal, considering there wasn’t actually anything in his stomach at the moment.

Just outside the alley was the car from the day before. It was shiny and spotless, even on the inside, as Michael realized when he was all but pushed into the passenger’s seat. It was probably a rental.

Ryan kept an eye on him the whole time he walked around the car, obviously prepared to run him down, if necessary.

Michael wondered if he was technically being kidnapped here.

He didn’t have much time to dwell on that before Ryan was settling into the driver’s seat and deliberately locking the doors, putting another tick into the ‘definitely being kidnapped’ column Michael was starting to compile in his head.

It was hard to work up the energy to give a damn, though. The car hadn’t been parked very long, hadn’t had time to cool back down, and it was already _so_ much warmer than outside.

He watched Ryan crank the heat up and turn all the little vents to face him, something he was stupidly grateful for, since he’d started shivering again.

Holding his fingers up to the vents, he tried not to audibly sigh as he felt them begin to thaw. It was one of those good hurts, invisible needles digging into his fingers all over as warmth and feeling flooded back into them.

After a few seconds of nothing happened, he looked over and saw that he was being stared at. Scowling, he snapped, “ _What_?”

Ryan raised an eyebrow, giving him a look like Michael should be able to read his fucking mind to find out what he was so obviously trying to indicate. A couple of heartbeats later, just before Michael was about to ask him again, he sighed, unbuckled his seatbelt, and leaned over.

Michael’s heart did something incredibly acrobatic as Ryan pushed him back into the seat and leaned over him. Too close, too warm, Michael could smell him and he had no idea what the fuck was going on.

Then Ryan pulled a seatbelt across his chest and lap and fastened it in place, giving it a tug to make sure it was tight enough before settling back down in his seat and refastening his own.

He threw the car into drive and pulled away from the alley while Michael tried to unclench his fingers from their sudden death grip on his backpack.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Told you guys! It took me way longer to update and this chapter is the longer than the last three combined by about 500 words. Still, I'm glad to see such a response for this story! People seem to have really missed the street!Michael AU! To be fair, it is a delight to write- and to see your reactions for! I hope this chapter satisfies your cravings.

The silence was not awkward.

Michael kind of _wanted_ it to be, so at least one damn thing would make sense that night, but apparently the only consistency he could expect was that nothing was in his favor.

Ryan seemed content to drive to the sound of quiet satisfaction and Michael was far, _far_ too tired to try and summon up the appropriate levels of silent fury that the situation called for.

The whole car was warm now, to a degree that would have been uncomfortable if the windows weren’t pure ice and snow wasn’t flying over the windshield as they drove. Damn car even had seat warmers that meant his ass wasn’t freezing from having sat in that puddle anymore.

With every breath he took, Michael was more… not relaxed, he wasn’t relaxed, but he almost felt _sedated_ by the warmth sinking into him. Even the pain of his injuries was starting to slip underneath the heavy fog that was filling his mind.

His head kept nodding, even as he tried to force himself awake. In a car with a possible sociopath was _not_ an appropriate time to sleep.

But he couldn’t help dozing, a little. His entire body was warm and light, like it was part of the tangible heat around him. Every so often, his eyes would flicker open, take in bright lights around them, from buildings or orange streets lights, then close again, all of it blurring together.

When the car stopped, he didn’t want to move. He just wanted to sit there and melt. But then Ryan had to go and turn off the car and the heater with it.

Michael didn’t realize he was still out of it until Ryan’s hand was back on his shoulder, fingertips brushing his neck as he gave it a gentle shake.

“Hey, you awake? We’re here.”

‘Here’ was apparently a parking garage. Michael spared a vague concern for the question of whether or not he was about to be murdered, but figured Ryan had plenty of chances for that between garage and alley and it really didn’t make sense to wake him up for it either way.

Groggily, he started to open his eyes more than just a sliver, then flinched and winced as one of the fluorescent lights overhead somehow managed to shove a pike through his eye and into his brain. The pleasant fog was starting to wear off, leaving the sharp pains of his cuts and the ache of pretty much his whole face. Also, bone deep exhaustion, but he got a feeling he wasn’t going to be able to indulge in a nap any time soon.

He nearly jumped when Ryan reached behind him to pull the hood of his jacket up over his head, pulling it down to rest as low as it could. “How’s that?”

Reluctantly opening his eyes was still painful, but his hood managed to block out the majority of the light, enough so it wouldn’t knock him straight on his ass.

Fumbling with his seatbelt, he managed to get it undone and swung his legs out of the car, planting them on the concrete floor and pushing himself into a standing position. Doing that shouldn’t have made him feel like he was going to pass out, but it kind of did.

The lack of sleep, the time since he’d eaten, and the blood loss were really starting to get to him.

Pain kept him relatively alert, though. From the cuts, from his face, his knee (though that actually hurt less now) but also from every single damn muscle in his body. He ached like he’d done something a lot more strenuous than walking around and getting into a single short fight.

It was only locking his knees that kept him upright while Ryan closed the car door behind him and locked it. The honk of the car confirming that it was locked almost made him hit the floor, knees be damned.

But then Ryan had a hand on his back, gentle, but insistent, and somehow he was moving forward. He couldn’t see a fucking thing with his hood up, but he probably wouldn’t have been able to see anything even if it weren’t, with his glasses gone. The touch was almost weird, but the almost absent way Ryan did it, like he wasn’t even thinking, and the fact that there was pressure, not just a hovering warmth brushing against his jacket occasionally, made him not really want to shy away from it as much.

It was a short walk from their parking space to a door. Ryan swiped a keycard, they walked in, and Michael was immediately assaulted by the scent of _hotel_ , cleaning products and cold. The light was dimmer there, more orange, and he almost tipped his head up, but he only got a glimpse of the patterned red carpet before he was being herded into an elevator.

The elevator was even brighter than the parking garage and he hissed through his teeth in protest before he could stop himself.

“Sorry,” Ryan said immediately. “We’re nearly there.”

He pressed a button and the elevator surged upward so quickly that Michael’s headache spiked, his ears throbbed in protest at the elevation change, and his vision sparked white, then black, then white again. When he blinked the colors from his eyes, he found he was leaning against the back of the elevator, upright only because of the bar bolted to the walls of it and a tight, almost bruising grip around his upper arm.

Cloth shuffled and his backpack swung into his vision. Ryan must have grabbed it when Michael got out of the car.

“Okay?” he asked, voice tight as he swung the backpack onto his shoulder so he could hold Michael upright with both hands.

Resisting the urge to shake his head to clear it (that would only end in tears), Michael ground out, clenching his fists in the pockets of his jacket. “Fine, I’m not going to collapse.” Probably. “You can let go.”

Ryan only made a disbelieving noise in the back of his throat. He pulled back, but not far, clearly ready to step in if it looked like Michael was going to act even more like a swooning maiden from a shitty romance novel.

If someone could just snipe Michael off in the next few minutes or so, that would be awesome.

The elevator gently jerked to a stop, dinging faintly as the doors slid open. To prove his ability to not hit the ground, Michael took the lead for a few steps, until Ryan caught up, immediately returning a hand to Michael’s back to guide him.

It was still dim inside the hotel itself, but Michael kept his eyes trained on the carpet anyway. The little moment in the elevator had made him slightly more conscious of the fact that he didn’t feel quite right. He knew what it was, of course. Knew he’d put his body under a lot of fucking strain recently.

But if he passed out in front of any of these guys, he was going to walk into fucking traffic.

They walked for a surprising distance, taking two turns before halting in front of a door. Michael expected Ryan to use the keycard from the parking garage, but the taller man just rapped his knuckles loudly on the wood.

After a brief pause, Michael heard the sounds of locks being undone and the door swung open. Tilting his head up, he saw the guy with the tattoos and the moustache from earlier that day, Geoff, he thought, who was looking at him like he was impossible.

“Holy shit, dude,” he said, clearly talking to Ryan, even though he hadn’t looked away from Michael, “How’d you find him?”

“I have my ways,” Ryan, the asshole, sounded smug about that.

The hotel room they walked into was nice, from what he could make out, with two queen beds, a large TV, a desk, chairs, a small loveseat, and an open door that led into a dark adjoining room that was its mirror image. Both room were empty, aside from Geoff. There was no overhead light, just a couple of lamps on further in, so Michael reluctantly pushed his hood back onto his shoulders.

Geoff visibly startled when he saw the blood. “What the fuck- what happened?” he demanded, voice going just hard enough that Michael started to tense.

Ryan’s hand came down on his shoulder and for some reason that made his skin crawl and he was curling out of reach before he knew it. Still, Ryan didn’t seem offended. “I’ll tell you later. Why don’t _you_ ,” he gave Michael’s shoulder a nudge, but didn’t grab it again, “go take a shower, then we can clean those cuts.”

It could not have been a more obvious ploy to get him out of the room so the other two could talk about him, but Michael went anyway. He was too tired to fight about it, didn’t really care because he knew how this was going to end (spoiler alert: he was going back to fucking Jersey, probably with a new coat or something, life would continue exactly as before, but with slightly more humiliation for him), and the idea of an honest to God hot shower was far too tempting to pass up.

The fluorescent light in the bathroom almost laid him out, but he squeezed his eyes closed until he felt a little more stable and had shut and locked the door behind him, then opened them slowly.

Various items were scattered across the bathroom counter. Some of them belonged to the hotel, but others had clearly been brought by the guys. A couple of different toothbrushes, a razor, a small jar of hair gel that was so brightly colored it looked radioactive, that sort of thing.

There were also bottles of shampoo and whatever else in the shower, so Michael felt no guilt whatsoever about swiping the hotel-provided ones for himself.

Hot water poured into the bath after almost no time and nearly burned his hands when he switched the shower on. He didn’t turn it down even a little as he stripped off his clothes (grimacing at the way his jacket pulled where it was practically glued to his skin by partially-dried blood), tossed them in a pile by the door, next to his battered shoes, and stepped in.

For a few seconds, everything was wonderful and warm and he could feel the water starting to wear down layers of grime, the cuts on his face and ear stinging, his arm not far behind.

Then gravity shut itself off and everything was distant and light and nothing hurt and he had to sit down before he fell down.

It was hard to tell if it was the steam or the lack of glasses, but everything around him was blurring and the only solid thing was the tub around him. He turned his back to the water and drew up his knees so he could rest his head on them until he stopped feeling like he was floating. It wasn’t a good feeling at all, it was like there was nothing anchoring him, like he was adrift outside his body and would never find his way back.

The water was hot on his shoulders, flirting with the edge of pain, and he took slow, careful breaths until he was confident that he wasn’t going to lose consciousness and drown in the shower.

This was fucking stupid. _He_ was fucking stupid. He’d gone longer than this, harder than this, a bunch of times before, he should not be so _drained_. Should be able to handle it.

Shouldn’t have gotten in the damn car with fucking Ryan.

There were a couple of different kinds of people that got involved with people like him. Excluding the other people like him and the cops, there were the Good Samaritan types. There were a few groups of those, the religious ones that came out on some kind of ‘mission trip’ and would hand out some relatively useful stuff mixed with tiny pocket Bibles and slips of paper with verses and slogans on them. Then there were the people who were doing it for publicity or brownie points or recognition or whatever. A couple of different organizations too, who did more useful things more regularly.

On a more individual scale, there were just the people who’d see someone down on their luck and offer them a meal or a hotel room for the night or something. Once in a blue moon, they’d help someone and a lot of the time they were sincere, but it was random, more about how they were feeling, if they felt the need to help, the need to prove to themselves they were a good person.

In any case, it was one act and they’d move on, feeling better about themselves, and the person they’d ‘helped’ would be left behind, with that one little taste of something other people took for granted and nothing else.

Michael had been the beneficiary of the latter group once or twice, when he first took to the streets, and honestly couldn’t say whether or not it had actually helped. In the moment, of course, it was fucking awesome, if kind of awkward, but the world he was really a part of just seemed that much colder, that much bleaker, that much hungrier after he was reminded what it was like before.

It was almost better to avoid it, if only so he wouldn’t be reminded that lots of people weren’t cold in the winter, had places to go, had plenty to eat. That, if his life had gone the way it was supposed to, he’d be one of those people.

It was easier to just think of the life he actually had, where each day was a fucking challenge where the reward was _survival_. You had to fight against everyone else to get it and they were fighting you for the same reason. They were people to watch warily, people to avoid. It was simple. Straightforward.

Everything was so much more complicated when he remembered that some people were kind.

Gravity settled him back into his body after he’d been sitting for a few minutes. Maybe he didn’t quite want to risk standing just yet, but that was the beauty of the tub. He didn’t have to.

It did feel good, clearing all the grime away. Back home, no one wasted clean water on something as trivial as hygiene, but he did try to not let himself get completely fucking disgusting.

The water swirling around him did not reflect this. It was grey and brown and red where it had washed away the dried blood closing up his cuts and set them slowly oozing again.

Fortunately, a basket of clearly untouched washcloths was within reach and there was a bar of soap in the collection of things he’d liberated from the hotel.

It took way longer than he thought it would to scrub the grime from his body. He hadn’t even realized how gross he was until he’d gone through a couple of the white cloths, scrubbing until his skin was bright red with it, and he realized he hadn’t seen the faded freckles there in quite a while.

Cleaning around the cut on his arm was a pain. Literally, since there was no way getting soap in it _wasn’t_ going to hurt. It was still bleeding a little and it was damn long, but it wasn’t as deep as he’d thought it was earlier. It wasn’t _shallow_ , it’d still leave one hell of a scar, he could tell by the way the pain was a strong, but dull ache rather than the sharper, searing pain of a more superficial wound. But it wasn’t going to kill him or even slow him down too badly. An infection would still fuck him up, but hopefully cleaning it _now_ would keep him from having to deal with that bullshit.

Restraining himself from using the entire small bottle of shampoo the first time he washed his hair was fucking hard, but, if the washcloths were anything to go by, it was going to take more than one pass to get it totally clean.

His hair had been plastered to his skull underneath his beanie for ages now and he’d avoided thinking about it too much for just this reason. It was disgusting. It was too long, he needed to cut it again soon. It was several shades darker than it should have been, perpetually soaked in grime and sweat and what-the-fuck-ever else.

Why the actual hell had Ryan let him in that nice, clean rental car?

He ran out of shampoo after washing his hair for the third time, but it felt like it had been enough to get it clean. A bottle of conditioner was also in his supplies, so fuck it, he put that in too, might as well.

Washing his face he saved for last. As nice as the warm cocoon of water and steam was, it was making his face throb even more than before and he had to tip his head back to let the clean water run over a thin line of blood that cut straight through his eyebrow. He wasn’t sure if it was from the lens of his glasses or just a side effect of the fist to the face, but he grimaced at the sting of the water and soap as he carefully cleaned around it.

Even after he was clean he just… sat there. Breathing in the warmth and letting it sink into his muscles. Again, he didn’t feel relaxed, couldn’t feel relaxed here, with these people who thought he was something he wasn’t, but he hurt less when his muscles loosened.

He was pretty sure he couldn’t singlehandedly use up all the hot water in the hotel (especially since the little bit he’d seen made him think it was fucking huge), but he didn’t know for sure, so he eventually forced himself to turn off the water.

Pushing the shower curtain aside immediately brought a rush of cooler air into what had been his nice warm space. He shivered, both in cold and in surprise at the sudden change, and every one of his newly washed hairs stood on end as the chill swept over him.

One good thing, though, was that it cleared a little of the fog from his head. The heat must have been part of the problem, he really wasn’t used to it.

A stack of towels sat on a wire rack over the basket of washcloths. It looked like the guys had been using some of the towels themselves, so he only took one and used it to scuffle his hair dry before using it on the rest of him.

One serious benefit of the hot shower was whatever it had done for his knee. It still twinged a little, but it didn’t hurt nearly as badly as it had before. He was testing how much weight he could comfortably put on it (most of his bodyweight, as it turned out) when a sharp knock on the door made him jump.

“You good in there?”

“Fine!” he shouted back immediately, fastening the towel around his waist as quickly as he could. Not that Geoff could come in, Michael had locked the door, but it just felt weird shouting at the other man while he was standing there naked.

“Got you something to change into, I’ll leave it outside the door.”

Breathing a sigh of relief that Geoff hadn’t wanted him to open the door to take it from him, Michael waited a few seconds before opening the door just a crack, snagging the pile of cloth his hand came in contact with, and yanking it into the bathroom.

It was just a pair of what looked like pajama pants, black with little green stars inside circles spread all over. The cloth was slightly stiff in that new clothes kind of way and Michael wondered where they’d gotten new clothing at shit o’ clock at night.

He pulled the pants on and they were a little too long, a little too big, but they had a drawstring, so he didn’t have to worry about them falling down, even if they did sit a little low on his hips.

When he went to reach for his shirt to put it back on, he caught of whiff of it and felt his face contract in disgust. Oh gross, he’d been wearing that. Why had Ryan practically forced him into a car when he _stank_?

He’d probably be able to wash his clothes in the bath tub. There was some soap left over, and a hair dryer attached to the wall that he could use to dry them, after. In the meantime, he was pretty sure he had one more shirt at the bottom of his backpack that was hopefully less fucking disgusting, though he wasn’t going to hold out too much hope for that.

The main room was way colder than the bathroom when he stepped out into it. A shudder ripped through him, followed by a wave of goosebumps breaking out on his damp skin as all the warmth he’d collected from the shower seemed to instantly vanish.

Crossing his arms in a way he hoped looked casual, he cast a glance around for his backpack, frowning when he couldn’t find it. He even poked his head into the dark adjoining room. There were plenty of bag-shaped blurs in there, but none of them were his.

“Where’s my backpack?” he asked Geoff, who’d been sprawled lazily on the couch and looking at something on his phone. Ryan was nowhere to be seen, which gave Michael a slightly foreboding feeling in his gut.

“Oh hey,” Geoff said, flicking his eyes up to look at Michael and settling on his bare torso. The man stilled for a second, expression never changing, before swinging his legs around to put his feet on the floor and standing. “Ryan went to pick up a few things, he took it with him so he could wash your stuff for you.”

Michael’s stomach bottomed out, the cold that shot through his blood having nothing to do with the temperature of the room. “What?” he heard himself ask, distantly.

Geoff shrugged, not seeming to notice that Michael was most definitely not okay with this new development. “Wanted to make sure you’d have something to wear tomorrow that wasn’t pajamas, dude.”

This, Michael reflected with an odd sort of detachment from the mounting rage searing through his veins, was the problem with _all_ Good Samaritan types. Whether or not they helped, whether or not they were sincere, he had yet to encounter a single one that didn’t think they knew him, that didn’t assume what he would and wouldn’t appreciate.

Michael, everyone like him, they were just one face out of hundreds to these people. He wasn’t a person, none of them were, they were an _idea_. They were each and every one the same in the minds of other people. The archetype shifted depending on the person, but it was usually either criminal, lazy drain on society (ha fucking ha, like society actually did anything for them), or poor bastard who got shit on by life (occasionally true, but always interpreted as ‘someone to be pitied and patronized’, which was a goddamn insult).

“What the fuck,” he snarled, watching Geoff’s perpetually tired-looking eyes widen in a way that would have been comical if he wasn’t so fucking infuriated. “What the fuck gives you the right to go messing around with my shit, asshole?”

His backpack only had one or two pieces of clothes even in it, he wasn’t using it as a fucking wardrobe. It held his spare knife (his _only_ knife now, considering the other two were still back in the alley, where he’d forgotten them like a fucking moron), a couple of beat-up books he’d stolen from libraries, the few possessions he’d managed to hang onto through all the foster homes. The only picture of his family that he had.

And, almost as important and far more concerning, it held his _goddamn gun_. If Ryan found that, Michael had no doubt that he was going to fucking die.

“I…” Geoff was just staring at him, which was starting to piss Michael off _more_ , making him dig his fingers into his upper arms as he crossed them tighter so he didn’t do something drastic. Asshole or not, this guy was Ray’s boyfriend. And _Ray_ hadn’t treated him like a charity case.

But then Geoff was shaking his head slightly, like he was snapping himself out of something, and when he looked back at Michael his eyes were… different. Still tired-looking, but Michael was starting to get the impression that that was just his face.

No, this time he was looking at Michael like… like Michael had surprised him, but also with an amount of… embarrassment, or something very like it.

“Sorry,” he said, stopping Michael short before he could build up to a good rant. By the time Michael had processed the apology, Geoff had his phone back out and was tapping away at the screen, “You’re right. I’ll have him bring your stuff back without fucking with it.”

That… weirded Michael out to a degree he really didn’t understand. It seemed reasonable, simple if he thought about it. Just apologizing for being a dick. Totally logical. Except… it still felt _wrong_ , almost surreal.

He shifted his hold on his right arm, sliding his hand down to grip his forearm, right over the cut, and squeezing hard. White sparks of pain streaked through his brain, so he probably wasn’t hallucinating just yet.

Blood welled between his fingers, immediately drawing Geoff’s attention.

“Fuck, right.” He reached down and picked up a weird container that looked like a cross between a lunch box and a tool box. “We should take care of that, here, the bathroom has better light.”

The bathroom had far, _far_ too much light, but Michael had reopened the cut like a damn idiot and he really didn’t need to lose any more blood than he had already. So he went back to the bathroom and put the toilet lid down so he could sit on it while Geoff dragged in one of the chairs from the main room.

Geoff pulled the chair very, very close to him and sat in it. Close enough that Michael could read the words ‘First Aid’ scrawled on the top of the box in permanent marker.

“That doesn’t look like a First Aid kit.”

Snorting, Geoff opened the box, pushing aside little shelves inside it to reach into a larger compartment at the bottom. “The ones they sell in stores are crap. They’ve only got Band-Aids, ointment, couple squares of gauze, and painkillers. Anything more than a tiny cut and they aren’t going to help for shit.” He pulled out a long piece of cloth and folded it tightly into a pad, “Here, put pressure on that.”

Mechanically, Michael took the cloth and pressed it hard over the cut, gritting his teeth, but not letting up. “Where did you learn this?”

“I was in the army,” Geoff snapped on a pair of latex gloves and soaked a few squares of gauze in alcohol, “and I have very accident-prone employees. Usually Jack takes care of it, he’s better at it than me, but I haven’t had a chance to get rusty. Tilt your head back and close your eyes, you don’t want to get this in them.”

After a second of hesitation, Michael did. He flinched back in surprise and pain when the alcohol was pressed against the cut to his eyebrow, even though he’d been expecting it. A hand curved around the back of his head, fingers sinking into his still-damp hair to hold him in place, and he froze completely.

“Who the fuck did you piss off?” Geoff asked, voice somewhere between concern and amusement. “Ryan said there were three of them.”

Fucking Ryan. Whatever, Michael wasn’t going to explain. It’d sound like a guilt trip if he did. “Turns out barbershop quartets get pissed if you skip practice to go to a video game convention.”

The gauze jerked against his forehead as Geoff started… giggling, there was no other word for it, the man was giggling. “Alright, smartass.” The cold fabric pulled away and ointment was smoothed over the cut after a short pause, then Geoff’s hand slid out of his hair. “Got anything else besides your arm?”

His ear had mostly stopped hurting, so Michael shook his head and let go of his arm for a second to scrub the heel of his hand over his eye and make sure there wasn’t any lingering any alcohol. When he opened his eyes again, he was briefly blinded by the fluorescent lights again and he grimaced through the corresponding skull-throbs.

Looking back up, he was a little surprised to find Geoff staring at him again. Geoff’s expression was very similar to Ryan’s, when he was waiting for Michael to stop being a dumbass and put on his seatbelt, but there was something a little more weighted to it.

“What?”

Geoff’s eyes flicked towards his stomach and Michael looked down at himself.

“Oh.”

With his focus on his head, ear, and arm, he hadn’t even noticed the aches from the rest of the fight. They seemed so inconsequential in comparison to the places that were actively bleeding, but bruises were starting to bloom on his torso. He’d thought they were just shadows when he’d been in the shower, but they were rapidly getting darker.

The bruises were worst just below his ribs, where he’d gotten a knee at high speeds, but there was also a long line of them down his left side. He wasn’t sure why until he remembered that he’d hit the ground pretty hard after that final punch.

Geoff shook his head and started to reach out and Michael didn’t even realize he’d jerked violently out of reach until he almost fell the fuck off the toilet.

If you put a gun to his head, Michael wouldn’t be able to say what made him okay with Geoff touching his hair and face, but made him try to vacate his own skin when the same man looked like he _might_ touch his ribs. All he knew was that it was the same thing that made him okay with Ryan practically steering him around, but made him jerk away when the man stood behind him and put a hand on his shoulder.

It made no sense, but his heart was racing, the last few drops of adrenaline he had pouring into his bloodstream, and he physically could not uncurl form the slightly hunched position he’d adopted to protect his side.

Geoff had frozen mid-action and was giving him another wide-eyed look that quickly faded into something Michael couldn’t read.

“Can I check to make sure your ribs are alright?”

“They’re fine,” Michael insisted, too fast and a little breathless. Geoff’s eyes started to narrow in disbelief and, after taking a deep breath to try and steady his voice, Michael rushed on before the determined expression had a chance to set. “I didn’t even notice until you pointed out the bruises. I know what a broken rib feels like dude, they hurt like a bitch.”

That actually made Geoff look slightly _more_ determined for a second before he sighed and dropped his hand. “I’ll take your word for it for now. Your arm stop bleeding yet?”

Michael had actually almost forgotten his arm, even though he’d kept the pressure on it. He pulled the pad away and the sticky blood pulling at his skin was still fucking gross, but the bleeding had indeed stopped. “Yeah.”

Geoff took his wrist to hold his arm steady while he cleaned it, another thing Michael apparently didn’t have a problem with, what the hell, brain?

“You are pale as dicks, dude,” Geoff offered in a conversational sort of way as he worked, having clearly taken no offense to Michael’s earlier flinch.

Now that he mentioned it and Michael wasn’t bright red from nearly boiling himself in the shower, he saw what Geoff meant. Without the ground-in layer of grime and under the fluorescent lighting, his skin was nearly painful to look at, broken only by the pale freckles that hadn’t seen the light of day in months. “Huh, I guess so.”

Geoff made a face and Michael wasn’t sure if it was at his words or from his inspection of Michael’s arm, “I think we can get away with butterfly stitches for this. Since I doubt you want to go to the ER-”

“No,” Michael said immediately, just as instinctive a reaction as flinching.

“Yeah, I can tell,” Geoff was going for humor, but his heart obviously wasn’t in it.

Michael didn’t quite understand that until he noticed the places Geoff was looking.

Funny. When he’d left the room without a shirt, he hadn’t even considered his scars.

The thin lines on his hands and forearms from knife fights, the acid burn on his lower right side, the thick red scars that dipped below the waistband of his pants from a hasty exit through a broken window (those had _definitely_ needed stitches that he absolutely did not get), a small circular burn on his left shoulder, the oldest ones, on both his shoulders and his back from… he just had a lot of scars.

_No one_ had ever seen them, no one besides him, no one had gotten the chance, and his skin was crawling all of a sudden.

He needed a shirt. He fucking needed a fucking shirt _immediately_.

Geoff gave him a long look when his hand started to shake, but wisely did not comment on it as he pinched the skin of Michael’s arm back together and placed the little white strips surprisingly evenly along the cut. He smeared ointment between the strips, then placed a pad of gauze over the whole thing, wrapping all of it with a roll of clean, white bandages.

Michael almost rolled his eyes when Geoff went so far as to swipe an alcohol swab against his split knuckles, but hissed through his teeth instead when the pain caught him by surprise. Maybe it was just a different kind of pain, but it hadn’t hurt nearly as much when Geoff cleaned his arm as it did when he swabbed alcohol over what barely counted as scrapes.

Then Geoff stood up, stripped off his gloves, threw them in the trashcan nearby, and left the room without a word.

Letting out a shaky exhale, Michael looked down at himself again and winced. It was weird, knowing Geoff had seen all that. It was just one more thing to add to the pile of weirdness about the man, but this sort of made him feel like he’d swallowed a hunk of ice and his skeleton wanted to curl in around it.

Maybe it was weird, but he’d never really… thought about his scars. They were just there. They had stories attached, but they’d been a part of him so long that he hadn’t considered what they might look like to someone else. What they might mean, if anyone but him looked at them.

He’d never been… embarrassed or whatever about them. He wasn’t sure he was embarrassed even _then_ , but his skin still prickled with cold as his stomach seemed to collapse in on itself.

He’d barely registered the sound of returning footsteps before a flash of green flared in front of his eyes.

After immediately throwing his arms up in a block, it was a bit of an adrenaline killer when the fabric fluttered harmlessly to drape over them.

“I didn’t give it to you earlier because you’d have gotten blood on it,” Geoff said from the doorway. “Let me know if you need a different size.”

The shirt was one of the softest fucking things he’d ever touched and had the same logo on the front as the pants did. He spared a brief thought for what that symbol was before pulling the shirt on, careful to avoid getting blood or ointment on it.

It only had short sleeves, but it still hid the vast majority of his scars and it was _so damn soft_.

Geoff had a satisfied look on his face and was opening his mouth to say something when he was cut off by a rapping at the door.

Michael was out of the bathroom and well behind Geoff before the older man had even undone one of the locks. The bathroom was a dead end that he didn’t want to be caught in, he wanted to have the option of fleeing through the other room, if he needed to.

It turned out to be Ryan, the fuck, and Jack. So he was stuck in a room with the three oldest and probably most dangerous boyfriends, awesome.

“Hey, you actually look like a person now,” Ryan greeted cheerfully, a smug grin spreading across his face when Michael flipped him off.

“Ryan…” Jack warned half-heartedly before turning to Michael and smiling behind his beard. “It’s good to see you again.” He did not comment on Michael’s wet hair or his borrowed clothes or the bruises that had to be forming on his face by now or the giant bandage on his arm.

Jack was cool, Michael liked him.

He liked him even more when Jack passed him a plastic bag and the smell of hot food hit him like a physical force.

“Ryan said you hadn’t eaten yet, so we picked some stuff up. You were in the shower when we texted Geoff, so we picked something at random, sorry.”

Michael was not sorry. Michael was very not sorry. He was holding a sack filled with snacks, granola bars, pop tarts, stuff that would keep, and what was very obviously a meatball sub sitting on top of it all, despite the fact that it was still wrapped in paper.

Swallowing around his heavily watering mouth, Michael managed, “Yeah, thanks.”

Ryan passed over his backpack alongside a large to-go cup that had condensation running down the sides. Clearly, he was hoping that a peace offering alongside Michael’s stolen property would be enough to keep him from getting yelled at.

Normally that wouldn’t have worked, but Michael’s body was taking that moment to remind him that, hey, he hadn’t eaten in two days and he’d been bleeding a lot and that sandwich smelled _really good_. His stomach was twisting itself into a knot and rumbling quietly (for now), so Michael just took what he’d been given with an obligatory glare towards Ryan and retreated to the table at the far corner of the room.

The sack of food that would keep went right into his backpack, but he was definitely going to eat the entire damn sub immediately.

His nose had been correct. Unwrapping the paper revealed a sandwich stuffed with meatballs and melted cheese and tomato sauce. It was still _steaming_.

The warmth he’d lost after getting out of the shower seemed to come flooding back as he took a massive bite of the sandwich, teeth sinking through bread and meat with a primal satisfaction. Flavors he didn’t care to break down exploded across his tongue and his eyes fought to roll to the back of his head.

“You’ll make yourself sick if you eat too fast,” Jack warned in a tone of voice that said he was perfectly aware that Michael was not going to listen to him.

Still, it drew Michael’s attention to the fact that the other three men were just sort of standing there and didn’t look like they’d be moving any time soon. Swallowing, he asked, “Where’s Ray and Gavin?” then took another huge bite.

“There’s a late night event going on downstairs,” Geoff said, sprawling onto the couch in almost the exact same way he had before. “Gavin wanted to go and Ray was nominated to go with him since he was the only one who could be trusted not to get even a little buzzed.”

“He is never going to forgive you for making him go to that party,” Ryan said, still just as chipper as he’d been when he walked in.

“True, but I didn’t want to get his hopes up,” Geoff’s eyes flicked towards Michael, then over to Jack. “They should be back soon, right?”

“Yeah, it’s supposed to end in fifteen minutes,” Jack agreed. Michael was barely paying attention. The drink Ryan had given him was Dr. Pepper. Michael was considering forgiving him a _little_.

The sandwich was gone so quickly that Jack looked physically pained, but Michael didn’t feel sick at all. The food sat heavy and warm in his stomach, but not in an uncomfortable way. All he felt was drowsy, coming off a steaming hot shower and a good meal was enough to render him nearly comatose.

It was the same thing as before, though. He was tired, but not relaxed, not with three people he didn’t really know in the room.

A yawn built in the back of his throat, one of the jaw-popping ones that made him feel like his lungs were straining against his ribs. He hid it by gritting his teeth shut and inhaling through his teeth, but it still made his eyes water and even blinking rapidly wasn’t dispelling his lack of ability to hold them open, let alone focus them on anything nearby.

Jack must have been watching him for signs of imminent puking, because his head had only nodded once before the other man suggested, “Why don’t you go lay down in Ray and Gavin’s room? They’re not using the second bed and they definitely won’t mind. You can go ahead and close the door, we’ll keep it down in here.”

On the one hand, Michael didn’t feel all that comfortable letting his guard down enough to be unconscious around these people he barely knew… and he kind of wanted to stay awake and see Ray. On the other hand, the idea of talking to Ray was still inexplicably terrifying and he couldn’t keep his eyes open for more than a second at a time and he was still mostly blind anyway. And if he could shut himself up in the next room, he could probably just take a quick power nap, he’d definitely hear the others when they came in.

He picked up his backpack with a long look at Ryan, who held his hands up in a plea of innocence that was completely undermined by his shit-eating grin. Kind of feeling like he ought to say something, but not having any idea what, Michael eventually just nodded to Jack and Geoff before stepping into the next room and closing the door behind him.

It was still dark in the room, not a single light on, curtains closed over the windows, but Michael only flicked the lamp on long enough to figure out that the untouched bed was the one closest to the window.

His backpack went in the corner between the bed and the wall, then Michael pulled the heavy covers back. It had been… nearly a decade since he’d last slept in an actual bed rather than a ratty mattress lying directly on the floor, and even that only when he could find a place with one.

He sat down slowly, feeling the mattress sink under him. For a lurching second, he thought he’d just keep sinking, straight through to the floor, but of course that didn’t happen. It was ridiculous, but the bed was just so _soft_ , it didn’t feel like it could support his weight.

If he’d been more awake, he’d probably have been more concerned about that, but he wasn’t. All he could do was slide completely under the blankets and sheets, drop his head on the pillow (a fucking _pillow_ , ratty mattresses in abandoned apartment complexes didn’t have pillows – or blankets for that matter), close his eyes, and breathe.

He didn’t let himself sleep, though, not at first. Honestly, he’d intended to, but the quiet voices from the next room and the fact that he knew Ray and Gavin would be back so soon kept him alert, even though his body was doing its best to merge with the mattress beneath him and his brain kept dipping into that not-quite-dreaming realm just before unconsciousness.

Not knowing what the guys were thinking, what they were planning, put him on edge. And he was sure the other two didn’t even know he was going to be there. Jack said they wouldn’t mind, but what if that wasn’t true? He didn’t want to be sleep-stupid if he had to leave in a hurry.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to wait long. It had to have been just a few minutes later that he heard a quiet commotion out in the hall. The handle of the room’s door rattled for a second, then he heard the fumbling impacts of a plastic card trying to find a slot.

The door finally opened, casting a blinding beam of light along the room, and he could hear one person lurching unevenly and softly giggling, almost completely overwhelming the sound of far more even footsteps.

Michael wasn’t quite sure what to do, if he should pretend to be asleep or say something or what, but the door to the adjoining room opened even before the one to the hall closed. The two who’d entered the room were shushed emphatically and apparently beckoned over, because they disappeared into the next room and the soft conversation picked back up in earnest.

After only a few seconds, he heard a very loud “ _Wot_?!” that could not possibly have been more British, quickly followed by what was the distinct sound of four different people shushing Gavin.

Biting his lip, he shifted a little to try to wake his melting muscles back up. That reaction hadn’t been good, if Gavin didn’t want him there he needed to leave, he wasn’t going to make waves between these guys. That would be such a dick move and they’re really done plenty enough already, they probably wouldn’t feel like they had to come after him.

He’d nearly convinced himself to grab his bag and make a break for it, nevermind the fact that his clothes and shoes were still in the next bathroom, when the adjoining door opened again.

Feet shuffled toward him, then-

“ _Gavin_ ,” even in a hissing whisper, that was absolutely Ray’s voice. Michael dug his fingers into the sheets and didn’t move a muscle, “c’mon man, leave him alone.”

“I just wanna ask why he ran off earlier,” Gavin’s voice was slurred and petulant, but it didn’t sound like he was coming any closer.

“So ask in the morning, he’ll still be here. Let him sleep. Let _us_ sleep, fuck you again for wanting to stay out so late.”

“C’mon, X-Ray, the fans loved it.”

“Go the fuck to sleep. We’ll talk about this when you’re hungover and I can enjoy it more.”

Amid British grumblings that were far too quiet for Michael to clearly make out, there were a few minutes of quiet shifting around and the bathroom door opening and closing a few times. Both of them crawled into the room’s other bed and the room gradually went completely quiet.

Gavin wanted to know why he’d left the convention. Michael had no idea what in the seven hells he was going to tell him, but it didn’t matter. It was late, the Brit’d had alcohol, he was probably going to sleep like the dead for quite a while.

Michael would hopefully be long gone before he had to give an explanation.

They’d done plenty, if he left in the morning they’d probably let him go, now they felt a little better about it. But they’d probably try to insist he stay longer and goodbyes were always awkward. He needed to be gone by the time they woke up, which would hardly be difficult, considering he almost always only slept for a couple of hours at a time.

Normally, sleeping was something of a challenge. Getting enough of it was nearly impossible, finding a safe place to hole up just wasn’t going to happen and being that vulnerable for too long would get you killed, more likely than not. The apartment complex with its giant hole in the floor had been pretty damn awesome for giving him at least a little peace, but even there he’d only been able to lightly doze, ready to move or fight immediately if he needed to. And it took forever to relax enough to achieve even that.

But in that dark room, listening to the hum of the heater, soft voices from next door, and the near silent snoring from one of the two people in the bed behind him, he’d dropped off by his third breath.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! Sorry it's been awhile, I have never been this busy in my entire life. Hopefully things will slow down soon and let me write more and post more frequently. In the meantime, here's a chapter! Enjoy!

After years and years of waking up at the slightest sound and springing immediately into full alertness, a slow crawl towards consciousness didn’t even feel _real_.

Michael had the oddest sense that he was forgetting something important, but he couldn’t remember what and didn’t particularly care. A cocoon of warmth and softness was the only thing he could process and he wanted to stay in that warm, semi-conscious place where nothing mattered for as long as he could.

Cloth shifted near his head, waking him up just that little bit too much, and he cracked his eyes open in annoyance.

Even his shitty eyes could pick up every detail of the face that was less than a foot from his.

An instant passed where he dimly noted the multicolored eyes and the crazy hair and the nose, then the situation registered completely.

“ _Fuck_!” He tried to scramble back, but he was expecting solid floor underneath his hands when he tried to shove himself away from the edge, not slick sheets.

Hands slipping, he slammed back into the mattress, only having successfully moved about a foot and a half. The sharp motion jostled his head, making pain explode behind his right eye that radiated through what felt like that entire half of his face.

Clapping his hand down over that eye when the light of a lamp bored through it like a power drill, he recoiled, trying to remember what the fuck kind of fight he’d lost.

“Sorry!” the yelp came with a British accent and _oh yeah these assholes_. Going from the dull thuds, Gavin had gotten to his feet instead of staying in his _crouched position by Michael’s bedside_ , Jesus. “Sorry! I just want to see if you were awake yet.”

“Well I sure as shit am _now_ ,” Michael hissed through teeth clenched so tightly that it felt like the muscles in his jaw were cramping. The loud voice was _not_ helping.

The heavy sound of the hall door clicking shut announced someone else had decided to join in on this insanity. “Really, Gav? I left you alone for two minutes.”

“I didn’t mean to _scare_ him,” Gavin somehow sounded both defiant and contrite at the same time. When Michael warily cracked open his left eye, he saw that Gavin’s lips were pressed tightly together and he was being stared at. “Alright, Michael?”

Instead of letting himself think too hard about the fact that Gavin somehow managed to say a name as normal as ‘Michael’ in a way he’d never heard before, he replied, “You were _six inches_ from my face, dude. What did you _think_ was going to happen?”

“Well, not _that_.”

“Yeah, good job, asshole,” despite his words, Geoff didn’t sound so much angry as he did fondly resigned while he walked further into the room and sat on the other bed.

Carefully, not quite willing to turn his back on Gavin (he didn’t think the Brit would do anything bad _intentionally_ , but that hardly seemed to matter), Michael sat up completely, grimacing through the pain in his face, and turned to look at Geoff.

Both Geoff and Gavin were dressed and had their shoes on and neither of them looked particularly drowsy (well, aside from Geoff’s normal sleepy eyes), which was weird for how early Michael’s brain was telling him it was.

Glancing at the generic alarm clock on the bedside table, Michael stared uncomprehendingly as the readout. “It is _not_ fucking ten in the morning.”

“Sorry dude, it really is. We’d have let you sleep longer, but it looks like _someone_ got impatient.” Geoff sent a pointed look towards Gavin, who’d walked around the bed and now threw his arms up in exasperation.

“It’s not _my_ fault he decided to wake up right that second!”

“Sure. Get the painkillers out of Ryan’s bag, will ya? Michael, c’mere.” Geoff beckoned with one hand, setting a water bottle he’d been holding and a circular plastic container on the night table.

Not really thinking about it, Michael scooted towards that end of the bed and swung his feet to rest on the floor, then froze when a heavily tattooed hand reached out and grabbed his chin, tilting his face towards the light of the lamp and making him grimace.

Geoff winced in sympathy. “Should have thought to ice that last night, sorry dude. Got one hell of a shiner.”

“Not a big deal,” Michael managed, very determinedly not thinking about how Geoff hadn’t moved his hand. "I can still see through it fine.” It hurt every time he blinked, and _especially_ when he screwed his eyes shut in pain, which was fucking dumb, but he wasn’t exactly going to pass that along.

“Alright, tough guy.” Geoff finally let go of his face so he could rap his knuckles against the plastic container. “Ice in here if you want it.”

Gavin came back into the room then, lifting a little bottle that rattled loudly over his head in triumph, “I’ve got the drugs!”

“My hero,” Michael drawled flatly, drawing a surprised grin from Geoff.

Apparently unconcerned by his sarcasm or annoyance, Gavin dropped down onto the bed surprisingly close to Michael. “Does that hurt?”

Blinking a few times and absently taking the water bottle Geoff handed him, Michael replied slowly, “Did you just ask me if my black eye hurts?”

“Well I mean, _obviously_ it hurts _some_ , but it’s hard to tell with bruises. You know how sometimes you’ll just find a huge random bruise and not remember getting it and it’s already gone all green like it’s old? Those can’t have hurt too bad if you just didn’t notice for ages, but then there’s tiny bruises that hurt like a _bitch_ , right?”

After a glance towards Geoff for help gained him only an ‘it’s fucking hilarious to see someone else have to deal with this’ sort of look, Michael turned back to Gavin. “It hurts as much as it looks like it hurts.”

Granted, he hadn’t seen his face yet, but going from Gavin’s sympathetic wince, it was an accurate estimate. “That sucks, mate.”

“Give me the drugs, Gavin.”

The back of the bottle said to take two at a time, so Michael shook out four and cracked open the water bottle. Neither Geoff nor Gavin commented on this clear disregard for medical guidelines, which was a wise move on their parts.

Michael downed half the bottle in one go, which was partially because he was really damn thirsty and partially because Gavin was giving him an expectant look and he really didn’t want to deal with an interrogation.

He’d planned to be gone by the time they woke up, he couldn’t believe he’d slept for like eight hours and, at some point, completely through everyone else getting up, getting ready, and leaving. He was a light fucking sleeper, he had to be, that just didn’t _happen_ to him.

Fortunately, he was saved from having _that_ awkward conversation by the hall door opening again and a couple of blurs that Michael assumed were Jack and Ray, going from their size and shape, walked in.

Even without his glasses, he could see Ray’s grin upon noticing him.

“You look like shit.”

The nervous tension that had started to build up in his spine on seeing Ray dissipated so suddenly that is was almost a surprise. Right, there was a reason he’d liked this guy. “Thanks a lot, asshole.”

“Ryan’s holding down the fort, but you guys should head down soon.” Jack walked over and handed a very surprised Michael a plastic sack. “We had to guess at your size, hope it fits.”

Michael’s heart climbed into his throat. They just kept _buying_ him shit. One or two things, that was something he’d figured would happen. But the sack had a pair of jeans, a hooded jacket, a black T-shirt that said ‘Technical Difficulties’ in a weird font on the front, some socks, and-

He lifted the beanie out with surprise. It was just a normal black beanie with that same green star logo on it. What was surprising was that they’d thought to include it.

“I noticed it didn’t look like you had the one you were wearing at the convention anymore,” Jack supplied, after he’d been staring at the beanie for probably too long.

“Uh, yeah. I lost it.” Left it in a grimy alley after getting into a knife fight. What the fuck had been _wrong_ with him last night? Left his hat behind, left _two of his knives_ behind, got into the car with a guy who gave off a slight air of psychosis… last night did not include his best moments.

Trying to push aside the embarrassing thoughts, he pulled the beanie on, tucking his hair up into it because holy shit he’d forgotten how curly it got when it was clean and it was _everywhere_.

Geoff made a noise of offended frustration and Michael froze mid-motion to stare at him. “What?”

“You said you weren’t hurt anywhere else!”

A long moment of silence passed before Michael realized that his hair had been covering his ear up until that point and Geoff had only just seen it. “It didn’t hurt that much anymore.”

Geoff scrubbed at his face with both hands. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Jack reached over and squeezed Geoff’s shoulder. “I’ll take care of it, you and Gav need to get downstairs and help Ryan out.”

“He getting buried?” Gavin asked in a tone that was a bit too gleeful.

“There’s a break in the panels right now. Yes, he’s getting swamped.”

Ray jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the bathroom. “Go get changed in there, dude. We got places to go.”

Michael narrowed his eyes in confusion, then immediately adopted a blank expression because _holy shit_ did eyebrows fuck with black eyes. “Where’s that?”

“Errands. Don’t want you running off again while we’re not paying attention. What’s up with that?”

Michael had grabbed the clothes and was halfway to the bathroom before he realized he’d moved.

Great, he thought, closing the bathroom door behind him and locking it with satisfaction. It wasn’t going to be easy to sneak away from these guys if they were actively _watching_ him. Not that they seemed all that attentive in the first place, but still. It made things even more difficult for him.

He liked being around them. Even when they pissed him off, he still liked them. But they kept _doing_ things for him and they were more than even for the watching-out-for-Ray thing and the returning-their-shit thing. Now it was starting to feel unbalanced. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to end up owing them and then they’d leave before he could make it even.

And what the actual hell could he even do for these guys? Unless they were in danger of getting their asses kicked, there wasn’t anything he could think of. And the older three looked perfectly capable of handling a fight anyway.

He had to leave before it got any worse.

Whoever it was that guessed his sizes before they got him clothes was pretty consistently close. The shirts fit fine, the pants were a little loose, but not so much that they’d fall off his ass if he started to run.

Even the _socks_ had the same fucking green fucking star on them, what the fuck _was_ it?

The jacket gave him a better idea. It had the star on it too, but it also had ‘Achievement Hunter’ plastered on the front of it. Whatever the fuck that was.

All of it was warm. Really warm, and he basked in the feeling as long as he could. Winter had barely started and it was always brutal here.

He folded the other clothes they’d given him as well as he could. He knew there was a specific way you were supposed to fold shit, but he had no goddamn idea what it actually _was_. It looked okay, though, so it was probably fine.

Before heading back out, he took a bracing breath and looked at himself in the mirror. Okay, wow, that was not pretty.

Maybe his eye hadn’t swollen shut, but there was a rainbow of colors surrounding it. Blue, black, and purple bruising, but also the deep red of busted vessels, especially where the lens of his glasses had dug in right beneath his eye. Even the bruises on his stomach and side weren’t that bad, though they were a spectrum in their own right now that it had been a few hours.

Then on the other side of his head, there was the ear. The cut there wasn’t exactly clean, given it wasn’t an even surface, but Michael hadn’t realized that it had kept bleeding after the shower. His hair must have hidden it the night before, but blood was smeared all around the cut and part of the way down his neck. No wonder Geoff had freaked.

Quickly, he grabbed some tissues and ran them under the faucet. The blood came off easily, revealing the cut more clearly. The knife hadn’t made it all the way through, it hadn’t had the right angle to manage that, but it’d gotten pretty deep into the cartilage of the ridges, which was a bit of a surprise considering the relative lack of pain.

Tossing the bloodied tissues away, he took one more look in the mirror to make sure he hadn’t missed something, then turned to leave.

Immediately upon opening the bathroom door, he was confronted with Jack, who was wearing a determined expression, holding a handful of alcohol swabs, a tube of Neosporin, and what looked like gauze.

“I just cleaned it, it doesn’t even hurt,” he protested, even as he was backed into the fucking bathroom with its bright as shit fluorescent lighting. “The guy didn’t cut through it or anything, dude, it’s practically a scratch.” It was a little achy, stung sometimes, but it was nothing compared to his head or the ache in his arm that felt like his bones had gotten involved.

“Humor me,” Jack said, laying out his supplies on the counter. _Way_ too many supplies for such a small cut, but hey, why not? Clearly these guys were _thorough_.

He didn’t freak out when Jack touched him, which was nice if only because it meant he didn’t have to fling himself out the window of whatever story they were on. A high one, if the elevator had been any indication.

No, he stayed calm, even as the cut was cleaned and medicated and bandaged (it was a nice thought, but the tape holding the folded bit of gauze in place was going to get itchy as _shit_ ). Jack didn’t talk as he worked, which was fine with Michael, especially since the silence wasn’t awkward at all.

When he was done, Jack smoothed his fingers over the bandage and shook his head as he pulled back, “It was really weird to have seen you just fine at the convention, then have you show up only a few hours later with all of this.”

“Nothing’s even broken, you guys are way overreacting.”

Jack gave him a long, long look. “It doesn’t have to be something that could fuck you up permanently to need treatment, you get that right?”

Okay, awesome, lecture time, let’s avoid _that_ one. “Yeah, I got it.” Slipping past Jack was all a matter of moving quickly enough, but he nearly got clocked in the head with his own shoes when he stepped out into the room. “What the hell, Ray?!”

“You’re taking _forever_.”

“Oh my God, bitch, bitch, bitch…” Grabbing his shoes, he pulled them on, glaring in the general direction of the blur that was Ray. “Where are we going anyway?”

The blur shrugged. “A couple of places. Like I said, errands.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Michael struggled for a moment about whether or not to take his backpack. He’d have to get his stuff out of the other bathroom if he wanted to try and slip away while they were out and packing up would probably be way too obvious. He just grabbed his tattered wallet, filled with stolen cash and gift cards, and slipped it into the back pocket of his new jeans. “Ready.”

“Are you going to be warm enough in just the hoodie?” Jack asked dubiously.

“The sun’s out, it’ll be fine.”

Ray levelled him with a flat look. “It’s twenty-three degrees outside.”

Not sure what his point was, Michael just shrugged when it became clear that they were waiting for a response.

Jack leaned over to pick something up behind Ray and Gavin’s bed, then flung it at Michael. “Here, Gavin isn’t going to need this before we get back.”

It was a nice coat, heavy and big enough to pull on over the hoodie. The scent of cologne clung to the fabric and Michael swallowed. “Is he gonna mind?”

“He’s not even gonna _notice_ , bro.” Ray nudged him. “And if he does, he won’t care.”

Michael still wasn’t totally comfortable with it, but. He liked being warm. He didn’t want to be cold again.

It was going to be a problem, he was getting too used to the heat. The winter had barely started, he didn’t need to get all dependent on it. He was going to be cold when they left, that wasn’t going to change, no matter what they did. Not being able to handle it would just cripple him when he went back out there.

But Ray was giving him an expectant look and Jack seemed worried, like he thought he was going to have to talk him into it.

He pulled the coat on.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to see Lazer Team in like half an hour, but I know some people can't go see 'Michael Jones: The Movie | Starring: Michael Jones' (I'm sorry for your loss), so I decided to post a new chapter in the hopes that it would ease the blow!
> 
> And for those of you who ARE going to see Lazer Team, feel free to come screaming into my askbox on Tumblr (off anon, I'm not posting spoilers on my blog) and we can discuss!
> 
> Speaking of discussions, shoutout to RunawayRabbit and riddlemyfiddle for the best comments ever! (I love when people analyze my stuff, talking writing is like crack to me) Thank you very much!!

“You fucking fucks.”

“Michael-”

“No fucking way.” Michael turned to leave, but Jack was _right there_. He squinted up at the bearded man through the sunlight and made his voice firm. “It’s not going to happen.”

They’d wandered through the city and he’d been fine with it. He didn’t much care where they were going and they’d either made casual conversation or walked in comfortable silence the whole time. It was nice. He couldn’t tell where they were going, with his shitty eyesight, but Ray’s bright purple hoodie and Jack’s sheer mass meant he wouldn’t exactly lose track of them, so it didn’t really matter.

Except _apparently_ , these assholes had decided one of the things they needed to pick up was a new pair of glasses.

Michael had not been aware of this until they neared a combination optometrist and glasses shops and he’d been able to see the ‘FREE EYE EXAMS’ declaration in the window because it was six fucking feet high and bright orange with black outlines. It had been specifically designed to be visible to the most crap of eyes.

And he was _not happy_.

“Ryan said he stepped on your other pair,” Jack said, his hands raised placatingly. “It’s only fair.”

Fucking Ryan. “Ryan is a goddamn liar, they were broken before he stepped on them.”

“But he _did_ step on them,” Ray pointed out, seeming completely unbothered by Michael’s reaction.

Michael ground his teeth. “Glasses are fucking expensive.”

“But the exam is free. And look,” Ray pointed at the advertisements with exaggerated enthusiasm, “it’s buy one get one free on frames! It’s a steal dude, you get two pairs.”

Two new pairs of glasses sounded like a pipe dream. Hell, even _one_ new pair would have been unbelievable. And Michael would be lying if he said he wasn’t tempted.

But it was too much. It pushed things over the line from a reasonable ‘thanks for protecting our boyfriend and getting our shit back’ reaction to, well… something Michael couldn’t even put a name to. When he was new to the street, good Samaritans had gotten him stuff, sure, before he started avoiding them. But they’d all been walking-on-eggshells, treating him like either a child or an idiot or both, speaking softly like they thought they were being kind when really they were just condescending.

These guys weren’t like that at all. He could _not_ figure them out and it was starting to bother him because they were actively trying to sneakily get him expensive shit and were in no way ashamed or apologetic when they were called out. Were they _trying_ to tip the scales in their favor? Did they _want_ him to owe them so much, for some reason or another?

Looking at Ray and Jack, he absolutely couldn’t picture them fucking him over. But if it wasn’t that, then _what the fuck was it_?

It didn’t matter how generous a person you were, how good a Samaritan. No one was altruistic enough to drop a couple hundred bucks in food, clothes, and _glasses_ on a random guy their boyfriend had abducted off the streets the day before.

His stomach twisted at the thought of accepting something like this, of asking them to do something like this. Because that was what it was, if he didn’t walk away immediately, it was him asking for it. And it felt like he was stuck in place, unable to walk away like he should have, but utterly refusing to agree to this, both because it made him feel like a thief taking advantage of people he actually liked and because he wasn’t sure if he was somehow being tricked.

“Just put up with it as a favor to us, okay?” Jack asked. He was still blocking Michael’s path, but his hands were very deliberately resting in his pockets. “Both of us have glasses too, we know how much it sucks to lose them sometimes. It’ll make us feel better to know you can see.”

Genuine. They sounded completely genuine and that made it worse, somehow, made him feel sick almost to the point of actual nausea. Because if he walked away they’d be upset, but if he went in with them and let this happen, he’d never be able to repay them, they’d never be even. It wasn’t just _money_ anymore and he didn’t have any idea where to even start.

The longer he stayed silent, the tenser the air got, the more Ray’s expression went blank and Jack’s went crestfallen. There were no good choices here, none at all. No matter what he did, he’d be digging his grave deeper.

He averted his gaze, feeling like utter shit, like he was lying, like his own guilt was going to manifest out of his gut, then punch him in it, when he bit out, “Fine.”

He just wanted them to stop looking at him like that.

Ray rolled his eyes. “Don’t act like we asked you to swallow a razor blade. It’s just an eye exam, maybe a quick shopping montage.”

Upset or not, Michael couldn’t help the look of horror he instinctively shot Ray, making him bust out laughing.

Michael heart clenched at the sound, even more when he looked up and saw Jack shoot him a grateful ( _grateful?!_ ) smile.

Despite the fact that it was a weekend, it was still relatively early, apparently early enough that there weren’t very many people waiting to get their eyes checked. Most of the people in the store were already talking to salespersons or were waiting in line to pick up something they’d ordered.

Jack went over to put Michael’s name on the list of waiting people and came back with a clipboard. “They just need you to fill this out.”

Name, address, phone number. Michael swallowed hard, “I-”

“It’s alright if you leave some of it blank,” Jack interrupted kindly. “I told them we were from out of town and your pair got broken. I’ll put my number down, they’ll need to call us when it’s time to pick up the glasses.”

Not waiting for Michael to object, Jack took the clipboard back just long enough to jot his phone number down, then returned it to his waiting hands.

The pen felt strange in Michael’s fingers. It had been… a _really_ long time since he’d had to write something, and it showed. His letters were legible, but they didn’t come naturally to his hands, the muscle memory was so rusty that it looked like a child's handwriting.

Still, he ground his teeth together and pushed through the embarrassment and the dull, throbbing pain that pulsed through his injured arm in protest at the movement. His pride had taken enough of a hit lately, he didn’t need to ask for help with _writing_.

And he definitely refused to focus on the fact that it took him a couple of seconds to remember his last name.

There were uncomfortable-looking metal frame chairs lining the walls back towards the exam rooms, but none of them sat there. Rather, Michael found himself actually enduring trying on multiple frames as Ray and Jack’s behest. They kept asking him what kind he liked and he kept trying to look at the stickers on each of the frames he was handed, the rock in his stomach getting heavier and heavier at each new price.

“Michael Jones?”

His head came up so fast that his neck muscles twinged in protest. The last time someone had called him by both names… he couldn’t remember it. Probably roll call, the last time he was in school. Years and years ago.

Jack was ushering him along, apparently accompanying him, and Ray waved them off, claiming he’d have found two frames for him by the time they were done.

The eye doctor introduced herself as Dr. Cloud and Michael did not ask if she was joking, mostly because he knew she was going to be getting up close and personal with his eyes very soon, but also because she raised one perfect dark eyebrow at his shiner and just said, “Well, I think I can see why you need a new pair of glasses.”

Dr. Cloud tried to make small talk as she gave his eyes a general check-up (he did not know that a check-up for eyes was a _thing_ , but okay). Michael tried to respond, but tripped over answers whenever she shone light into either of his eyes, which was _constantly_ , so she wound up conversing mostly with Jack.

“Okay,” Dr. Cloud say, sitting back on her stool and moving aside the giant machine he’d been staring into while it blew air in his eyes (why). She was scribbling something on her clipboard and Michael really, _really_ wished he knew what because holy shit was she writing a lot.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to find a tactful way to ask what the fuck was wrong with his eyes because Jack took care of that for him.

“Is something wrong?”

She jerked like she’d forgotten she wasn’t alone. “Oh- oh, no, nothing big. It’s just, Mr. Jones?” Michael blinked in surprise when she turned to him. “Have you been getting headaches often, towards the end of the day? Especially when you’ve been reading a lot?”

He stared at her, thinking back. “Well yeah, but-” but there were lots of reasons he could have headaches, he barely slept, hardly ate, and lived in a constant state of paranoia that led to him keeping knives up his sleeves. The last thing he’d considered was that something was wrong with his eyes.

“I thought so,” Dr. Cloud said, tapping her pen against the top of her clipboard. “Your eyes are strained, like you overwork them. It’s a good thing you broke your glasses, actually, your last prescription was _far_ too weak. Your eyes have had to overcompensate to focus what they could see, causing the strain and the headaches.”

Michael couldn’t breathe. Had he fucked up his eyes? Oh shit, oh fuck, he couldn’t afford an actual problem, but he also couldn’t afford to have _fucked up eyes_ -

“But getting a new prescription should fix that, right?” Jack asked pointedly, snapping Michael out of his mental spiral.

“Oh, of course. The muscles will recover just fine once they aren’t having to make up for the glasses, it’ll just make getting an accurate prescription a bit more difficult.”

She spun to one side on her stool, grabbing what looked like a torture device mounted to the chair Michael sat on by a swivel arm and pulling it around in front of him.

 “Alright,” she said, facing Michael again, “I’m going to ask you to look through here and tell me which images are clearer. But your eyes are going to be used to straining to make up for a weak prescription and we need to make sure they aren’t giving up an inaccurate read because of it. So every time I switch to a new image, I want you to blink a few times and consciously relax your eyes, then open them and tell me what you see.”

It sounded stupid, but, well… it worked. She’d have him look through one lens to read out a row, but when she reminded him to blink a few times and relax, the images would go slightly out of focus and he couldn’t read as much as he could before.

The last time he’d gotten an eye exam, he was a preteen, and he was absolutely sure that Dr. Cloud had triple the intelligence of whatever hack he’d seen. Then again, the state wasn’t really known for their exacting standards.

“Okay,” Dr. Cloud said at last, after putting him through a battery of identical images and asking him to tell her which one ‘looked clearer’. “You’ve got a minor astigmatism in each eye that I’m certain your other glasses weren’t accounting for, so it’ll take you a while to adjust when you put on the new ones. And glasses really do work best for astigmatisms. Contacts for them _do_ exist, but glasses are far better and can be made to your exact prescription. The contacts would really just be the closest number they make and with your existing eye strain-”

“Glasses are great,” Michael said, not wanting to hear any more ways his eyes were fucked up. Besides, there was no way in hell he could afford contacts, didn’t they have to be replaced all the time? Weren’t they way more fucking expensive than glasses, long term?

Jack stood from the tiny metal chair in the corner where he’d been sitting and shook Dr. Cloud’s hand, “Thank you, ma’am.”

“Yeah, er, thanks,” Michael scrambled out of his own chair, trying to follow Jack lead. Were you supposed to thank very confusing people that gave you eye exams?

Dr. Cloud just looked bemused and slightly charmed. “You’re very welcome.” She passed him a slip of paper. “Show them that once you’ve picked out some frames and they’ll make you the right lenses.”

Oh right. Frames. Bits of metal or plastic that were ungodly expensive. Some of the ones he’d been handed earlier were over a hundred bucks, some were even more than _that_.

How was he supposed to pick out something like that and ask the guys to _pay_ for it? It was even worse than just theoretically knowing they’d be spending money on him, he had to actively go out and pick which expensive thing to ask them for.

He didn’t get a chance to worry about it too much, though. The second they stepped out into the more public area of the building, Ray came over from where he’d apparently been hiding from everyone else in the corner and stuck a set of frames on his nose.

Michael startled, but didn’t flinch when the frames curled around his ears and settled on his face. Through the foggy display lenses, he saw Ray nod.

“Good.” Then he whisked the first pair off and settled a second pair in their place. “Also good. I’m an artist.”

Not even really thinking about it, Michael looked up at Jack, whose expression he couldn’t quite make out. But Jack’s voice was warm when he said, “They do look good on you. What do you think?”

Jack nodded to one of the many mirrors around, but Michael just shrugged, plucking the frames off his face. “I don’t really care either way. Not exactly looking to enter any fashion shows.”

The frames in his hands were metal wire, like his old ones. They seemed simple enough, thin rectangles set in black metal that turned brown when the light hit it. He twisted them to look at the price sticker, but Ray snatched them out of his hands.

“Great!” he said, blatantly ignoring the frustrated look Michael was beaming at his face. “Take our words for it, then.”

Michael didn’t want to, even though they looked simple, that didn’t mean anything, they could still be really expensive. But he hesitated and then Jack called over someone and said that Michael had found the frames he wanted, then he was being pushed into a chair and had to hold a weird contraption up to his eyes so they could make sure the glasses would fit his head.

Then there was a lot of talk about anti-scratch, anti-glare, all different kinds of things they could add to the lenses- for a small fee, of course. And Jack or Ray would always interject with a question or a joke, subtly steering the conversation so they got what sounded reasonable, but nothing ridiculous, all without letting Michael say a single fucking word.

He felt like his heart had crawled up his throat, grown arms, and was strangling him from the inside. Free exam or not, the lenses were going to be goddamn expensive and the frames may have been buy one get one free, but they still had to purchase two sets of lenses to go in them.

He wasn’t great at guessing prices for this sort of thing, but even the lowest ones he could think of put the price of the visit at well over two hundred dollars by the time he was done.

Neither Jack nor Ray batted an eye at that, which was making the sick feeling in Michael’s stomach get worse and worse because _God_ , they seemed so sincere, so _nice_ , but there was no way that they wouldn’t hesitate about _that much_ money. They didn’t look or act rich enough that it wouldn’t matter, they seemed like regular middle-class people, and two hundred bucks was still a _lot_. What were they _thinking_?

Michael almost smacked the wallet out of Jack’s hands when he pulled it out so the salesperson could take his card to run it. The only reason he didn’t back out and bolt out of the store was because Ray snorted loudly and showed him a text he’d just gotten from Ryan- a picture of Gavin tangled up in the booth curtains and Geoff standing nearby, looking torn between laughter, despair, and confusion.

And then the salesperson was gone and back again, carrying a receipt and saying the glasses should be ready in just an hour or two and they’d call the number on his paperwork when it was time to come pick them up and he was having some serious difficulty with remembering to inhale.

“You guys want to get lunch or something while we wait?” Jack asked as they stepped out into the crisp air. “You haven’t eaten yet, have you Michael?”

Oh no, nope, not a chance. He opened his mouth to… refuse or lie or maybe yell at them for spending so much money on him because what the _fuck_ was he supposed to do now? But the thought of food, however brief, seemed to get his body’s attention because his stomach let out an embarrassingly loud growl and he kind of wanted to die.

Ray grinned, but not meanly. “We absolutely have to get real New York pizza while we’re here.”

If Michael’s face got much hotter, his ears might actually catch fire. He tried to clear his throat, but his voice still sounded a little strangled when he managed, “I can get behind that.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've written so much on this story in the last few weeks that it's surpassed my other ongoing projects by a somewhat embarrassing degree. Can't stop, won't stop.
> 
> Thank you all so much for the comments, I'm so excited you're enjoying the story!!

Michael hadn’t really thought ahead when eating his bodyweight in six-cheese pizza (Ray and Jack had ordered a whole pizza and not eaten that much for some reason, it would have gone to waste otherwise since there was no fridge to put it in at the hotel). The thought that ‘getting used to’ new glasses might make him dizzy probably wouldn’t have _stopped_ him, but directly defying it would’ve made him feel like less of an idiot.

His first impression on putting on the new glasses was _holy fucking shit_. Everything was so much _sharper_ , even the colors were clearer and stronger. He hadn’t realized how much he hadn’t been seeing, even with his old glasses.

They were standing fifteen feet away from the wall of windows that made up the front of the shop and he could see the handprint smudges on the door. He could see Jack’s actual face, not just a smudge of orange from his beard and hair. He could see the grin Ray turned away to hide when he caught him looking.

Immediately on the heels of the first impression came the second, which was that the floor and the counter both suddenly looked like they were a foot farther away when he looked directly at him than they actually were. It was like looking through a fishbowl, things going farther away when he looked at them head on, and coming closer when he turned.

Blinking rapidly, he shook his head, like maybe it would knock something loose in his eyes so the world didn’t look like a funhouse anymore. It, of course, did not work.

“What the fuck…?” he asked a little helplessly, feeling for the edge of the counter to reorient himself. His body told him that his hand moved like four inches, but to his eyes it looked more like a foot and a half, which was more than a little jarring.

The guy behind the counter nodded. “Your eyes are going to take a little while to figure out the new lenses, but everything will go back to looking normal in a few hours, a day at the most. Just maybe don’t drive until then?”

“That’s not going to be a problem,” Michael agreed, a little weakly. The combination of the sudden sharp focus of the world making him see everything at once with the fishbowl effect was really starting to fuck with his head. He’d never gotten motion sick before, but he was starting to think that the lightheaded nausea, headache, please-just-let-me-sit-down-somewhere-solid-until-everything-stops feeling might be it.

“You okay, man?” Ray’s voice came from his right and Michael jumped nearly five feet in the opposite direction when a hand landed lightly on his arm.

He needed to have a serious talk with his body about what was and wasn’t a threat, Jesus _fucking_ Christ.

“Yeah,” he said, a little too fast, trying to push through the stunned silence before it could settle. “It’s just- confusing. Everything looks farther away.”

“Objects in mirror are closer than they appear,” Ray said with absolutely zero visible or audible indication that he even noticed the fact that Michael had rocketed away from him at speeds approaching supersonic.

“Are you going to be okay to walk back?” Jack asked. “If your depth perception is off, it might be dangerous. We can get a cab.”

Haha no. They weren’t going to pay for a cab because Michael was nervous about walking a few blocks, no way in hell.

“It’s fine,” he said, trying to stand a little straighter and blink less. “I need to get used to them anyway.” It wasn’t too bad if he didn’t look down. He could manage that.

The guy at the counter filled a small plastic sack with his spare pair of glasses (spare, he had a _spare pair of glasses_ ) in a hard case, the case for the ones he was currently wearing, and some cleaning solution and cloths. Michael tried hard to listen how to take care of the glasses right, but it took nearly all of his focus to keep looking at the guy instead of madly in all directions trying to make the fishbowl effect _go away_.

He sort of wished he had his backpack as they left the store. Partially because the streets were pretty crowded now that it was a little later in the day and slipping away from Jack and Ray would have taken exactly zero effort, but also partially because the thin bag in his hand did not feel like it could protect its contents nearly as well as it should.

Ray nudged his arm with an elbow and to his relief he didn’t jump at all. “How are the glasses working? They any better?”

Everything was still ridiculously sharp and clear, almost to the point of hurting his eyes, but he’d gotten the hang of not looking down and walking was a little easier. “They’re great man, thanks.” Those four words felt incredibly inadequate and he struggled for something else to say, anything else. Something that could encompass that he was grateful, but also sorry for having them spend so much money on him. There had to be words for that, but they were not fucking anywhere near his brain.

They didn’t seem to mind, though. Ray just nodded with a small smile and Jack was checking the time on his phone. “The next panel isn’t for another couple of hours, but we should go back and give Ryan a break before he snaps and starts killing people.”

“You mean before he snaps and kills Gavin.”

“Gavin is people.”

“Says you.”

Michael couldn’t help shaking his head at them, even as he grinned. He’d spoken to Gavin for all of three minutes and he’d already picked up on the fact that the guy could not be explained. Keeping him cooped up in a booth for an extended period of time was probably not the best plan.

But hadn’t Jack and Ray just come from the booth when they came up to the hotel room that morning? It seemed kind of unfair to have them go run errands during their break-

Oh fucking shit-faced lying bastards.

He was a goddamn idiot. The only places they’d gone were the glasses place and for pizza. The whole ‘errands’ thing had just been a ploy to get him to go with them. They’d literally used their break to go spend a shitload of money on him when they could have been exploring the convention and having fun or relaxing.

The leaden weight of guilt and dread in his gut tripled. Opening and closing his mouth, he tried to find a way to phrase the fact that he wished they hadn’t done that, that they shouldn’t’ve, that it wasn’t fair and it wasn’t going to balance out and now he was even more screwed.

“Hey Michael, you okay?”

They kept _asking_ him that, what did they expect him to _say_?

He shook his head, “Fine. Just getting used to the glasses.”

“If you start feeling sick, we can stop,” Jack offered.

The cold air burned his lungs as he sucked it down, trying to keep his voice casual, to not let on what was going on inside his head. “Jesus, it’s not a big deal. Just a little… disorienting.”

“Still, let us know.”

_Let us know_. Did they not have a limit? How many allowances were they wanting to make for him? Why were they _doing_ this?

He clenched his fists tightly, breathing through his teeth so he wouldn’t ask. For one thing, he’d sound ungrateful, for another… he wasn’t really sure he wanted to know. He was going to be leaving as soon as he fucking could, before they decided to buy him a damn car or something. So any angle they might have wasn’t anything he’d have to worry about.

Ray caught his eye and shot him another grin, which he automatically returned.

It was nice to just let himself feel like he had friends, for a little while.

 

* * *

 

Then again, sometimes even pseudo friends could apparently be very fucking annoying.

Upon returning to the convention center (Michael had thankfully stashed his badge in his wallet after leaving the day before, in a rare moment of sentimentality), they’d made a beeline for the booth where he’d met Geoff, Jack, and Gavin the day before.

They hadn’t even fully rounded the corner before Gavin seemed to _spawn from the fucking ether_ , directly in Michael’s face. Which led them to their current position.

Michael squinted through his new glasses, the convention lights stabbing directly into his eyes. The motion sick feeling had mostly faded from his head, but the nausea was being stubborn about it, despite the fact that the fishbowl effect was actually disappearing pretty quickly. “What?”

“Come play a demo with me!” Gavin demanded again, somehow even louder. He was far too close and seemed to be physically restraining himself from grabbing Michael’s arm and dragging him off. “It’s co-op and they won’t let you play by yourself and I don’t want to match up with some random tosser. Ray said you were good at games, so you should come play with me!”

After a long moment of blinking, Michael slid his eyes over to Ray, who shrugged and followed Jack off to the booth at just _slightly_ faster than casual walking speed, completely abandoning Michael to his fate like the jackass he was.

“Ray watched me play Legend of Zelda for half an hour,” he said, not really sure _why_ he was arguing about playing a video game, but not wanting Gavin to think he was going to be going into this with someone who was actually practiced at what was (probably) some kind of shooter, “that’s it.”

When Gavin rolled his eyes, his whole head got involved. “Don’t be a pleb, Michael-” why in the ever loving fuck did he say it like that, like Mi-c _oo_ l? “-it’s a game, it’s for fun! Come on!”

And that was how Michael wound up waiting in line for an hour after Gavin’s self-restraint wore down and he was tugged across half the convention center to where the demo stations were set up.

By the time they got to play, Michael had gone from ‘uncomfortable, but relatively chill’ to ‘three point four seconds from mass murder’. The nausea twisting his stomach seemed to be getting steadily worse, the heat of the convention center had gone from pleasant to sweltering, and the painkillers he’d taken that morning were wearing off, if the gradually increasing throbbing in his head was any indication.

It didn’t help that Gavin _had not shut up once_. It had taken every ounce of Michael’s willpower to keep his mouth shut, to not engage the chaotic stream of brick-headed stupidity and almost-brilliance that was coming out of the Brit’s mouth.

Then they actually got up to the demo station and this resolution dissolved before they even figured out the controls.

“What _the fuck_ , Gavin??”

“Sorry!” Gavin yelped, not sounding _entirely_ sorry. “Didn’t realize that was the fire button!”

“It’s the _trigger_ , you moron!”

“There’s two triggers, Michael!” Gavin’s character was not advancing along the path, it was behind a stack of crates where there was absolutely nothing. “It might’ve been the other one!”

Tightening his grip on the controller, Michael tried to resist the urge to shoot Gavin’s character in the head so they could end this demo and forfeit their spots to the next duo in line. “When is the fucking _left_ trigger _ever_ the _goddamn fire button_?!”

“It might’ve been!”

That set the pattern for the whole game, really. But as much as he wanted to just whip his controller through the screen in front of them, or maybe Gavin’s skull, whenever he had to save the Brit’s character from _his own grenade_ , the game was actually kind of fun.

And every so often he’d look over at Gavin and… the guy’s face was just lit up. He looked _delighted_ , especially when he’d meet Michael’s eyes.

It made it hard to stay mad at him and, if he stopped taking it so seriously, it was so much easier to just let the nonsense roll off his back. Which was good because there was a _lot_ of nonsense.

“Quit picking up all the fucking ammo, asshole!! You don’t even _have_ the goddamn assault rifle!”

Gavin had this weird high pitched squeaking sound he made when he started laughing too hard, “I’m just holding it for you, Michael!”

“No you _aren’t_ , your inventory is fucking full! I can _see your screen_ \- I SAW THAT YOU _FUCKER_ -”

“No you didn’t,” Gavin whispered under his breath, still audible even through his giggling.

“I’m going to fucking _shoot you in the dick_ , then the neck, then _three more times in the dick_ and then I’m going to loot your worthless _goddamn_ _CORPSE_ and take all the fucking ammunition that you’re not even _using_ because you keep _stealing all the fucking grenades you FUCK!!_ ”

“I _need_ the grenades, Michael!”

“What do you need the grenades _for_ , you can’t walk in a straight fucking _line_ how the fuck are you going to-”

The screen lit up with an explosion, followed by the screams of NPCs as blood and dismembered limbs flew through the air.

The first laugh took him by surprise, bursting out of his mouth right ahead of, “ _How the fuck_ did you _do that_?”

Gavin look pretty pleased with himself for his single-grenade quintuple homicide. “It’s just physics, innit? They had to be all bunched up there, so if you can bounce it off the wall-”

The he turned to look at something to make his point, accidentally fired his gun, and put a round through a small pile of explosive barrels, killing them both.

“ _GAVIN!_ ”

Before he could even turn completely towards his _worthless co-op partner_ , Gavin had dropped his controller and lunged away, moving incredibly quickly for someone who was seventy percent arms and twenty percent nose.

Michael still felt like shit, but there was no way in _hell_ he wasn’t going to give chase.

“Get back here you British fuck!” The shout was probably undermined by the fact that he laughed through it, but he couldn't  _help_ it.

The whole thing was so goddamn _stupid_ , but Gavin was just running in circles around the demo stations, ducking around grinning and laughing convention goers and not even thinking to dart into the lanes of booths or crowds in the rest of the center to lose his very loud pursuer.

Michael’s eye hurt and his arm hurt and his stomach hurt, but his cheeks were also starting to hurt from grinning too much, which made everything else pretty easy to ignore.

“Geoff!” Gavin yelped after two more futile laps where Michael’d actually managed to gain on him. “Save me!”

He took a flying leap two seconds later, before Michael had even caught a _glimpse_ of Geoff, and the two of them nearly went down in a tangle of limbs. Somehow, Geoff managed to regain his balance, though he fumbled the phone in his hands badly and nearly dropped it as Gavin’s long limbs locked around his torso, the Brit somehow having managed to attach himself to Geoff’s back like the most useless backpack ever.

“There is no way in hell you expect me to believe you don’t deserve whatever the fuck he wants to do to you, right?” Geoff wheezed through the arm compressing his windpipe as Michael desperately skidded to a stop in front of them.

“But Geoff! Geoff, you love me Geoff, you can’t let him kill me! I can’t die young Geoff, it would be so tragic!”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Gavin. Only the good die young.”

Michael hadn’t even noticed Ryan was _standing there_ , but in his defense he had his hands planted on his knees and was trying to suck in more air than his lungs could possibly hold while also keeping his lunch down. The lights seemed really bright and his head felt really hot, but it didn’t actually hurt, so it was probably fine-

“You need an inhaler, Michael?” Ryan’s voice was mostly sarcastic, but there was a thread of a real question under there, so Michael flipped the bird in his general direction until he laughed.

“We’ve got a panel to go to, you wanna come with?” Geoff asked, sounding a little less like he was dying now that Gavin had shifted his death grip to his shoulders instead of his neck. He was also still supporting both their weights and not really seeming to struggle with it, so either this happened a lot or Gavin really did weigh as much as a bundle of twigs stuck together with hair gel might.

It took him a few seconds to process the question, the air he was breathing in was starting to feel cold, but at least he didn’t feel like he was dying anymore. When he realized what was being asked, his heart tried to leap and sink at the same time and wound up just flipping over sideways in his chest, but he did his best not to let either of those things show on his face.

He shook his head, the fact that he was still out of breath making the lie a lot easier when he said, “I probably ought to just go shower.” Grimacing convincingly when he glanced up at the lights overhead was in no way a challenge. “And get more painkillers.” Swallowing down the bile rising in his throat, he tried to keep his expression blank.

Geoff just shrugged though, managing to extract his wallet from his back pocket despite the Brit still clinging to him like a baby monkey and giving Michael suspicious looks over his shoulder. He pulled a card free and held it out, “Here’s the key, you remember the number?”

Michael wasn’t sure he’d ever _seen_ the number, but Ryan offered “2425” before he had to admit to that.

He felt weird, guilty and wrong, when he closed his fingers around the card. They were just going to let him go up to their room by himself and trust him not to steal all their shit. Who _were_ these people?

“Closest exit is over there,” Ryan gestured over Michael’s shoulder. There was something in his expression, not quite ‘I know something you don’t know’, but more like amused observation.

Curiosity about that threatened to rise up, but Michael quickly quashed it. It wouldn’t matter here in about an hour, when he was back on a train.

He kind of felt like he ought to say something, but there was nothing that wouldn’t give away what he was up to, so he just gave a little two-fingered wave and turned to leave.

Turning his back on the three of them, he found himself wondering if he maybe shouldn’t find out the panel they were going to, so maybe he could see Jack and Ray before he left.

Shaking his head, he pushed forward. He couldn’t let himself fall into trying to find reasons to stay just a little longer. If he did that, they’d be heading off to the airport before he knew it and then there’d be the awkward goodbyes, a thought which turned his stomach even more than whatever the hell was currently going on with it.

He’d rather leave without getting a chance to say goodbye than have to live through them saying goodbye to _him._


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another longer chapter! And one that is specifically engineered to break hearts, how much do I love you guys? <3

By the time he reached the rooms, Michael was burning up. He barely made it inside before ducking into the room where he’d spent the night and throwing Gavin’s coat to the ground where it’d been that morning (he’d taken it off while waiting in line, but just carrying it around made him hotter), stripping off the jacket and the beanie he’d been wearing, then, when that wasn’t enough, peeling his shirt (which was just starting to stick to his skin with sweat) off too.

It wasn’t the room, it felt like it was coming from his _skin_. Hotels were always cold and he could even feel the chill of the air cooling the sweat on his back seconds after taking off his shirt. The problem had to be with him, right?

That wasn’t a huge surprise. In the elevator on the way up, his headache had spiked and the nausea had intensified to the point that he’d had to bite his lip and breathe carefully through his nose to avoid puking all over the nice cosplayers who definitely thought he had the plague or something and had casually pressed themselves into the far corner.

Pulling his glasses off, he yanked the case for them out of the sack that had been looped around his wrist for the last two hours and carefully put them inside. Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to force everything back, but opening his eyes to the familiar blur of colors did nothing to calm his stomach. So it probably wasn’t the glasses that were causing it.

That was about as far as he got into the deductive process before he choked and had to bolt into the bathroom.

Someone had left the toilet seat up, which was fucking stupid, so he was ninety-eight percent sure it was Gavin, but that actually turned out to be a good thing because he barely had time to lean over the bowl before he was throwing up.

Puking with a black eye was easily one of the worst experiences he’d ever had. The puking itself was bad enough, but the instinct to screw his eyes shut and the way his head squeezed with every retch… yeah, he was kinda surprised he still had an eye when he was done. The cut through his eyebrow pulled painfully and there was a very good chance he’d just reopened it. Plus, greasy pizza? Not so good the second time around.

He was surprised and a little disgusted with himself by how long it took his stomach to empty. That was a waste of a lot of good food. Sure, _he_ hadn’t bought it, but that just made him feel guiltier.

Even when he was done, he wasn’t sure he wanted to move. He felt better, aside from the fact that his eye was a throbbing burning mess. He didn’t feel like all the organs in his gut were a swollen infected tangle, for the most part, anyway. The bathroom tile was pleasantly cool, even through his jeans, and there was just enough stomach pain still lingering for him to be hesitant about moving away.

But he was sort of on a time table. He needed to get up, get his gross clothes that were still in a pile in the bathroom next door, find a way to fit them and all his new shit in the same backpack without hurting his new glasses or-

“Michael?”

When he tried to lunge to his feet, the new denim slipped on the tile and he nearly ate shit on the bathroom floor. He caught himself, but his brain slammed into the side of his skull, or at least felt like it did, and he had to retch into the toilet a few more times because brains were dicks like that.

There was a quiet swear from behind him and he wanted to turn, but he wasn’t quite sure if his brain was done up to that yet. From the voice, it was Jack or Ryan. But the footsteps that crossed the bathroom and flicked on the faucet were just a bit heavier, a different pattern than the ones he’d memorized from the alley, blind and hopped up on adrenaline.

A large shadow fell over him and he started to push himself up, mouth already opening to play this off as motion sickness, when something cold and wet touched the base of his skull.

He jerked a little in surprise, but didn’t pull away when the damp washcloth was draped over the back of his neck. At first, he was a little confused, but the last of the nausea faded in seconds as the coolness of the cloth sank into his skin and spread across his shoulders, accompanied by no small amount of goosebumps.

The deep breath he tried to take almost made him throw up again when he caught a whiff of the sour stink coming from the toilet bowl. Sitting back on his knees (carefully, because he felt like his head was full of marbles), he swatted the lid down and flushed it all away away with a grimace. Clamping a hand down on the washcloth to keep it in place, he hung his head and tried the breathing thing again, with a lot more success this time.

Jack shuffled back into the room (when had he left?) and a handful of tissues was pressed into Michael’s free hand. “Here.”

Taking the hint, he quickly scrubbed at his face. Streaming eyes and nose and sweat did not a pretty picture make and he didn’t need to provide his eyes with any opportunity to be more blurry than they already were. Smears of blood were dark on the blank material and he grimaced, pressing the wad to his eyebrow carefully for a few seconds to stop the bleeding that had, indeed, started up again.

“Thanks,” he croaked and, ugh, his voice rasped up his throat like gravel. And his teeth had that gross soft feeling they always did after he got sick. It was hard to try and avoid tasting your _own mouth_.

He wracked his brain. It wasn’t firing on all cylinders by any means, but he was still confused. What was Jack doing there? Did he not go to the panel? How was he going to slip out now? What was he going to say about _this_ , how could he explain it in a way that wouldn’t have them worried he’d give them a superbug or, even worse, make them want to take him to a doctor?

“Sorry.”

The apology yanked his thoughts to a halt like they were on choke collars. After replaying the word in his mind to make sure he actually had heard it, Michael turned and, yup, there was Jack, crouching next to him, visible through the damp strands of hair hanging over his eyes. Close enough that his expression was clear, even without Michael wearing his glasses.

“What for?” He demanded, even though he still sounded like he was choking on ash.

Jack held his eyes, even though his expression was pained and… concerned? _Guilty_? “I knew you could get sick if you ate too fast or too much. We should have gotten something that would have been easier for you to keep down instead of most of a cheese pizza. Your body can’t be used to handling that much food at once and it’s not exactly the easiest thing to digest.”

What the _hell_ was that supposed to mean?

They’d all sort of been avoiding the topic. Not deliberately, but like it was an open secret. Michael lived on the streets, that was just the way it _was,_ even if they didn’t want to think about it, or say it. But he hadn’t thought anyone would make any specific assumption on what his body was and wasn’t ‘used to handling’, what the fuck? What did _they_ know?

He opened his mouth to, well, ask exactly that, when Jack reached out.

It was a slow movement, completely visible, giving Michael plenty of time to pull away. When he didn’t, as much out of curiosity as out of the fact that he was sort of completely frozen both physically and mentally, Jack’s hand settled on his bowed back.

Michael immediately stopped thinking about the fact that Jack was touching him when he realized that the tips of Jack’s fingers had fallen into the tiny dips caused by the bumps of his spine pressing tightly against his skin.

He looked down at himself and it was like the day before, with Geoff, with his scars, all over again, but _worse_ now.

The last time he’d really _looked_ at himself was beyond his memory. But still. He should have noticed when he got so _thin_ , shouldn’t he?

Forcing himself to notice now, he ignored the colorful bruising, the scars, everything. His ribs weren’t really sticking out or anything, but the shadows of their outlines were visible under the harsh fluorescent light. His fingers, clutching the crumpled mess of tissues in a tight fist, were spindly and looked too long. Muscles were hinted at under the skin of his arms, the strength he’d had to keep up to survive. But he hadn’t noticed that his arms had gone slender, had some muscle sure, but didn’t have the right shape anymore.

He was staring at the way the bone on the outside of his wrist jutted out when he was hit hard by a wave of mortification.

_God_ , how fucking pathetic did he have to look? Kneeling on the bathroom floor of a stranger’s hotel room, cut and bruised all to hell with a big-ass bandage on his arm, sweaty and gross from having just thrown up everything he’d eaten that day, and, apparently, skinny to the point of being a visible concern.

He pulled away, Jack’s warm hand immediately retreating, brushing lightly against his skin as it went and leaving a new wave of goosebumps that made Michael shudder violently, especially when the cold washcloth slid down his back and hit the tile with a wet smack.

“Oh, here-”

Whatever Jack was going to say in his perception of him being cold, Michael didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want to hear _anything_. No more words of consideration or acts of kindness. He didn’t want to look at Jack’s face and see pity there. He hadn’t yet, but he knew what he looked like now.

Oh God, Geoff had seen too. And Michael had been covering most of his scars when he was hunched over on the floor, but there was no way Jack hadn’t seen the ones on his back and shoulders, no way he wasn’t seeing them now when Michael turned to leave the room.

Both of them. Both of them had seen. Skinny and beaten and covered in scars, that was what they saw when they looked at him.

He couldn’t deal with that.

After gathering his stuff from the next bathroom, Michael dumped it onto the bed and lifted up his backpack. The old stuff would have to go towards the bottom, it could cushion the spare glasses and other things that could get hurt. Fitting the new stuff in was going to be a problem, especially with the sack of snacks that was still sitting in there.

Or, wait, was he allowed to take the new stuff? The jeans he assumed, they’d come with tags (that had had the price ripped off), but the other stuff hadn’t, so was one of them lending those to him? But Geoff had said to let him know if he needed another size, so-

“-ichael?”

The grip on his wrist, or, well, the lower part of his hand, really, wasn’t harsh. It was gentle, careful, but it was also sudden and Michael was striking out, smacking Jack’s hand off and pulling back before he even really thought about it.

Immediately upon seeing the stricken look on Jack’s face, Michael’s chest cavity caved in. Oh God, he was just making it worse, he was just a fucking disaster area that was going to tear through these guys and take and take and not be able to give anything back and he needed to _go_.

And then Jack just had to go and say, “I’m sorry.”

“Stop _apologizing_!” Michael barely managed to keep his voice under control as he shook his head. “For fuck’s sake, what are _you_ apologizing for when _I’m_ the one that hit you?”

“You didn’t hurt me,” Jack said immediately, showing the lack of so much as a red mark on his hand, “and it was my fault for grabbing you all of a sudden. That would make anyone freak.”

Maybe he wasn’t hurt, but that didn’t make it _better_. Not in any damn way.

Fuck it, the old stuff was just getting shoved in his backpack, he’d sort it out later. He’d keep one of the new shirts, he kind of had to because he was _not_ walking out of here without a shirt on and he’d sweated on that one pretty thoroughly, so they probably wouldn’t want it back anyway.

He turned for a second to locate where he’d tossed the shirt and when he faced back toward the bed, Jack had moved his backpack just _slightly_ out of reach and rested a hand over it.

Michael didn’t want to look at him. He really didn’t. But as the seconds passed, it became clear that he was going to have to or they’d be there until the end of time.

Jack’s face was patient, like he’d been calmly waiting for several minutes now for Michael to come out of his mental fucking freak out. “Please talk to me.”

Michael swallowed hard, the new lump in his throat not being kind to the rawness that had yet to go away. “Give me my bag.”

“I will,” Jack said immediately. “I’m not going to try and force you to stay here. But please, _please_ talk to me first and help me understand.”

How long had it been? How long did they have before the others came back? How long _were_ panels anyway? It felt like they stood there in silence, just staring at each other, for an eternity.

“What do you want me to _say_?” The crack in Michael’s voice was absolutely from the fact that his throat had been filled with acid a few minutes ago. “You want my fucking tragic backstory?”

“No. Or, well, not unless you want to tell me.” Jack was still calm, unflustered and immovable. “I want to understand why you feel like you have to leave.”

Christ, it felt like Jack had wrapped a hand around his heart and was just slowly twisting it. “Why the fuck are you even here? Why aren’t you at the panel with your boyfriends? Didn’t you want to see it?”

“I was worried about you. Why do you have to leave?”

Grinding his jaw was making his head throb worse, but it was the only thing he could do. What could he say? Any fucking thing he could say would sound melodramatic as shit at _best_.

‘It’s not even, I can’t pay you back.’ They’d insist he didn’t need to, they wouldn’t _get_ it, wouldn’t get how shit it was to even owe someone a _favor_ some places, let alone something like hundreds of dollars and a good night’s sleep. Even if it was something they waved off, people always came back around to it the first time they needed to come out on top. Everyone kept a running tab of debts owed, even if they didn’t know it or didn’t think they did. And on top of it all, _he_ couldn’t write it off for himself. In the incredibly unlikely event these people turned out to be actual saints, then the responsibility for evening the score would be on him and he hated that feeling. He wanted to know what he needed to do before he got into it, but going in with things already uneven would mean he’d feel like shit saying no to _anything_. Anyone having that kind of control over him, no matter how chill they seemed, was not something he could stand.

He couldn’t say, ‘Because I can’t stand the fact that you’ve seen what I really look like.’ That was some straight up vampire novel bullshit. Jack was looking right at his eyes, not at any of the scars there were on prominent display now that they were facing each other. But he’d seen. And no matter what, Michael couldn’t erase that. Jack would see it every time he looked at him. There was no forgetting it.

He couldn’t say, ‘Because I like you.’ See: vampire novel bullshit. But also, pointing out that they were going to have to rip off the band-aid and say goodbye sometime in the next twenty-four hours anyway and he didn’t want to, and especially didn’t want an awkward ‘hey good luck out there, dude’ where everyone kind of wanted the universe to delete itself… Pointing that out wasn’t something Jack could _fix_ and it would just be putting him on the spot. Because his wanting to ‘understand’ was him wanting to convince Michael to _stay_. But how long did they really have? Not long at all. And there’d be nothing he could say to that.

“Because you’re fucking idiots and I’m going to break you.”

Oh, okay, apparently his damn mouth had some opinions of its own on the fucking subject. The words sounded right to him, sounded fitting, but he didn’t even know what he _meant_.

Jack was silent for a long time, long enough that Michael was seriously trying to figure out if he could grab his bag and make a break for it.

“Michael,” his eyes were kind, soft, hard to look at for too long. “There’s five of us. And we all lean on each other when we need to. We’re harder to break than you think.” He paused, tilted his head. “Though the ‘fucking idiot’ thing is pretty true.”

Michael didn’t mean to start laughing, he really didn’t. His stomach was still sore from throwing up and his throat protested him doing anything other than _breathing_. Still, he couldn’t stop, which was a little worrying, and it wasn’t even _funny_ , really. But there he was anyway, hunched over with his arms wrapped around his stomach, just laughing until he was fucking _crying_.

“What the fuck is _wrong_ with you people?” he wheezed, not bothering to wipe his streaming eyes this time, just watching a few drops slide down his nose and plummet out of his range of sight, down towards the blur of the carpet.

His hair was hanging in front of his face, but he could see Jack’s shadow as the other man took a hesitant step forward, then another. Then his arm came up, out of the corner of Michael’s eye. “Can I…?”

He wasn’t sure what Jack was asking, but it probably involved touching. He hesitated, because he wasn’t really sure _what_ it was that made him freak out sometimes. Then again, if he had warning, maybe he could stop it? And he had smacked Jack away earlier, he needed to make up for that.

Finally, he shrugged his consent and immediately there was a large hand on his shoulder, pulling him in.

Not expecting it, he stumbled a little before he crashed into Jack. Then there was an arm around his shoulders and another around his waist and a hand in his hair and curled around his ribs and, oh.

Hugging. Right. Gavin had done that, but it’d been quick and Michael’s brain had been more focused on keeping his hands from moving of their own volition and stabbing him. But. But with Jack. He had to think. It was instinct, to start to think back to the last time he got a real hug, then immediately stop himself.

It was different with Jack than with Gavin. Jack was just sort of… holding him. Michael wasn’t sure what to do, exactly, his arms were still folded around his abdomen and he didn’t think he could force himself to move them, to try and return the hug. It seemed like such an awkward idea.

Jack didn’t seem to mind, though. He wasn’t doing much of anything but holding on, tightly, but not to the point of pain and carefully avoiding Michael’s bruises. He was warm, really warm, and soft, easy to lean into. Not that Michael leant into him on purpose. It was just that the hand cupped around the back of his head was sort of holding it right up against Jack’s shoulder and he had to tilt it to keep the bruised part from pressing against Jack’s shirt, so he just wound up kind of laying his cheek there for a second. And then not moving it.

He didn’t know what was happening anymore. He’d come up here to _leave_ , not stand in the middle of the room, letting someone who was in a committed relationship with _four other people_ hold him while he was half-naked and in the middle of some kind of hysterical meltdown.

God, he couldn’t get any more pathetic, could he? He should feel something about that, he knew he should, but the more he leaned into Jack, the more tired he got. It sort of felt like he was coming down from an adrenaline high. His legs felt empty and tingly, as if they’d been asleep. He couldn’t quite get a full breath, it was like his lungs kept spasming when he went to inhale, making the air stutter into his chest unevenly. Not to mention that he sort of felt like he’d be shaking like a goddamn leaf if he weren’t being held so tightly.

What was _wrong_ with him?

At some point Jack’s thumb had started moving back and forth against the sensitive skin behind his ear. Jack probably didn’t notice, but Michael was finding it hard to concentrate on anything else. Part of his brain was screaming at him that Jack’s other hand had wound up over the acid burn scar and they really ought to be freaking the fuck out about that, but. He was too tired. And Jack was _really_ comfy.

He didn’t notice when he started being able to breathe normally again. It must have been gradual, like the way he’d gone from ready-to-bolt to half-asleep and practically being supported by the guy he was leaning against.

They must’ve been there a long time, right? Staying any longer was probably weird? They should move.

Michael’s legs really didn’t want to obey that particular command.

It was Jack who finally broke the moment. “Here, c’mon,” he said, gently pulling Michael around and pushing him to sit on the bed. He went without a fight, and he wasn’t sure which of them was more surprised by that.

Head bowed, shoulders slumped, he couldn’t really bring himself to say or do or _feel_ anything. He was wrung out and empty and he didn’t even know _why_.

The same hand that had been distracting him for the last however-long pressed against his forehead. “Okay, you don’t have a fever, that’s good.” Then Jack knelt and started tugging at his shoelaces and he had to do _something_.

“I can-” he started to reach out, but Jack wouldn’t move enough for him to actually get to his feet.

“It’s fine,” Jack said lightly, despite the fact that those sneakers were battered to hell and gross as shit. “I’ve got it.”

Michael wasn’t sure how so much body heat could possibly be generated just by having shoes on, but the fact remained that he shuddered again once they’d been set aside. Jack made a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat before standing and wandering off, the hotel room door shutting loudly as he stepped out into the hallway.

The part of his brain that was still capable of real thought was screaming at him again. He had to take the opportunity to get up and move, to grab his stuff and get out before Jack came back, that it might be his only chance to get out without a confrontation.

But then he blinked and Jack was next to him. He had a bottle of Gatorade in one hand that he’d obviously had to go buy. Michael braced himself for the wave of guilt at having him spend _more money_ , but nothing happened. Even his emotions had run out of steam.

How had Jack gone and come back so fast? Michael hadn’t heard him come in. It had seemed like just a few seconds, but he had to have at the very least gone down the hall to a vending machine.

Why couldn’t he remember how long Jack had been gone?

The bottle was pressed into one of his hands, two small blue pills, the same painkillers as the ones he’d had earlier that morning, into the other. “Take these and try to drink most of this.”

Fingers closing around the slick plastic, Michael fumbled to get the lid and the seal off without dropping the pills while Jack took a spare blanket from over his shoulder and spread it out over the still-mussed sheets and blankets already on the bed.

The fluorescent blue liquid was freezing cold, which did not help the goosebumps breaking out all over his skin, but it washed away the taste in his mouth and made breathing a little easier. It chilled him all the way to the core, but it was a relief when it hit his stomach and the nausea didn’t come back.

He’d downed half the bottle before Jack reached out and pressed the tips of his fingers against his shoulder. When he looked up, there was nothing in his eyes but steady patience. No pity, nothing. Just… Jack.

“Better?”

Looking at him for too long kind of hurt in the general vicinity of his lungs, so Michael ducked his head as much as he could without it being overtly rude and shrugged. The lack of response itself was probably rude, but for some reason he couldn’t dredge up the concentration to open his mouth, let alone form sounds or a complete sentence, when he was presented with that question.

Jack wasn’t bothered by that either. His fingers were bright spots of heat against Michael’s freezing skin, “Come on, lie back, you need to get some rest.”

“It’s the middle of the day,” Michael protested hoarsely, finally finding his voice despite the fact that he genuinely did not have the energy to raise his head back up.

“Doesn’t matter,” slowly, Jack put his hand all the way on Michael’s shoulder and nudged just enough to tip him towards the pillows. “Your body’s trying to heal, that’s going to make you tired. I bet being sick didn’t help either. You should at least grab a couple of hours.”

Michael did not want to sleep. Michael wanted to- well, not _wanted_ to, but _needed_ to get his stuff and the leave hotel as soon as possible, before he got talked out of it again.

But he wasn’t sure he could make it to the _lobby_ at this point, let alone through New York, a train ride, and the search for a new place in Jersey (which he _still_ needed to find). Going out there right now, though it was probably the right thing to do, might very well get him killed.

What was going on with him? Why was he so exhausted? How had he managed to sleep eight hours the night before and still be hit with this overwhelming desire to just… _stop_ a few hours later?

He let himself relax enough to slump back onto the pillows and was out before Jack could turn off the light.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I'm struggling writing each new chapter of this, I get more and more concerned that it's been forever since I've updated. Then I check the site and it says it's only been four days. I feel like writing and posting this story is something that takes place in an alternate dimension separate from my life.
> 
> That said, I'm posting this chapter slightly prematurely as I only have one and a half more chapters saved up at this point in time, but I feel like this chapter is long and interesting enough to leave off for a bit while I build back up the story reserves. And flee to Alaska and change my name so you guys can't find me.
> 
> (btw, RunawayRabbit and paradoxi- I <3 you very much!)

When he woke up in the hotel bed for the second time, it was pretty much the exact opposite of the way he’d woken that morning.

Eyes snapping open, heart lurching unsteadily into a sprint, he jackknifed up into a sitting position before he even realized he was awake, let alone where he was. He looked around, remembering where he was as he fought to catch his breath. All the lights in the room were out, but the crack under the door to the next room had a light on and the closed curtains had faint streetlight glow hovering beneath them.

How long had he slept this time?

Burying his head in his hands, he took a moment to calm down, trying to gather his thoughts. His last memory before sleeping was utterly humiliating so, after the initial cringe and rush of blood to his face, he put it aside to examine later (because what the actual _hell_ had that been?).

He was alone now. That was good. He could go with his original plan and slip out without them noticing.

When he went to swing his legs over the side of the bed, he paused in confusion when he found himself tugging against the sheets and blankets. That was weird, he couldn’t remember having pulled the blankets up and they were pooled around his waist too, so they must have been covering his chest at the very least-

Had Jack fucking _tucked him in_?!

Christ, okay, leaving. Leaving _now_.

His backpack was sitting on the floor next to the bed, small favors. The clothes he’d collected over the past few days were folded and on the nightstand, pretty obviously for his use. At this point, he was so far in debt to these guys that a couple of shirts and pairs of pants wouldn’t matter, so he just set a shirt aside (the soft green one from the night before) and tucked the others into the backpack.

Shaking the shirt out, he paused for a few seconds before sliding his hand up over his shoulder and pressing down on the warped, discolored scar tissue there. There was no possible way Jack had missed it, was there? Especially since the rest of his skin was, as Geoff had put it, ‘pale as dicks’.

Sighing, he pulled the shirt on over his head, then tugged on the jacket and the beanie. His shoes were right where Jack had set them earlier, so he pulled them on and tied them tightly, ignoring the fact that the sole of the right one was detached almost completely and the left could only be laced up halfway because the holes on either side had torn.

The small sack of stuff that contained his glasses was on the night table too, so Michael grabbed a case at random, shoved the glasses from it onto his nose, then carefully placed it all in his backpack, tucking the shirts around it to shield it as much as possible.

Predictably, this was when the door to the adjoining room opened and he was half-blinded by light.

“Oh, good, you’re up,” the silhouette that was Geoff said from the doorway, sounding totally unconcerned by the fact that he’d just caught Michael prepping to ditch them. “C’mere for a sec, I wanna talk to you.”

Oh God, what now?

Given an option, Michael would really just rather make a break for it, but Geoff was keeping the door propped open by leaning against it. Arms crossed over his chest, he was very obviously waiting for Michael to walk in ahead of him. And he was perfectly positioned to block the path to the hall door.

Fuck.

After a brief inner conflict on whether or not to take his bag and eventually just leaving it by the bed in an attempt to avoid having to talk about it, Michael wandered over. Hands in his pockets, he glanced sideways at Geoff as he passed and found the man’s face to be carefully blank. Which… honestly, from what he’d seen so far, could go either way with Geoff, the man was frustratingly difficult to read.

Ryan was the only other person in the next room, perched at the foot of one of the beds and giving him a seriously disturbing thousand-yard stare. Michael had no idea where anyone else was and was a little afraid to ask.

“What did you want to talk about?” he asked, taking one pre-emptive step back towards the hall door as Geoff settled in a chair that had been pulled over so he could sit across from Ryan.

Raising an eyebrow, Geoff gave a pointed look to the other bed, where he’d apparently been expecting Michael to sit, before taking another look at him and visibly deciding to just leave it alone. “Do you know who we are?”

Of all the things for Geoff to want to talk about, Michael hadn’t been expecting that. Honestly, he’d been expecting that Jack had told them what had happened, or that they’d decided they need to have some kind of talk about his situation, both of which were conversations he’d rather eat nails than have.

This, though? This was just confusing.

“… Geoff and Ryan?” he hazarded, looking between the both of them.

One corner of Ryan’s mouth quirked up in something that would probably be a smirk when it grew up, “Thought so.”

Geoff didn’t look particularly surprised either. “Huh. You haven’t seen that logo before?” He flicked a finger out at Michael’s T-shirt.

Automatically, he glanced down at the green fabric. “No,” he said firmly, “seriously, what the fuck is it and why the hell is it _on_ everything?”

Sitting back in his chair, Geoff gave him a long, silent stare before his moustache twitched and his eyes crinkled in a smile. “It’s our logo. We’ve got a website and a YouTube channel where… well, it started out as achievement guides, but now it’s a little different.”

“Long story short,” Ryan said, leaning back and crossing his arms, “we make a living making videos of us playing video games and giving each other shit.”

Fight the urge to snort his disbelief, Michael scoffed, “Okay, so…?”

The next words out of Geoff’s mouth were, “Do you want a job?” and every single conscious thought in Michael’s brain shut down.

For a good ten seconds, the only sound in the room was the loud humming of the fan under the window. Michael spent those seconds staring blankly at Geoff and Ryan, watching for any twitch, any tic, that might indicate what they were thinking.

At the end of those ten seconds, he turned on his heel and marched back into the next room, slamming the door shut behind him hard enough to shake the frame.

He managed to get his backpack on before the door swung open again.

“Michael, what the fu-?”

“You seriously expect me to believe you just want to _give_ me a job playing _video games_?” he snarled, tugging the straps around his shoulders as he adjusted to the backpack’s new weight. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re ‘playing’ at, but don’t expect me to fall for it.”

Something was building in his chest. Something burning that was taking away his breath and heating his skin. Something that made him grit his teeth against a scream.

They seemed surprised for some reason, which gave him a chance to blow past them and make for the hall door. Unfortunately, they recovered pretty quickly.

Light footsteps, the same ones that had dodged around blades seemingly without effort, caught up to him just as he got the door open. “Look, just hang on a s-”

A hand closed down hard on his upper arm, and the thing in his chest shattered.

Ice cold water doused the fog of heat and he was whirling. His heel came down hard on Ryan’s foot and, when the older man flinched back automatically, he followed it up with the strongest punch he was capable of throwing.

The pain of the broken skin on his knuckles splitting open again was a welcome distraction from the way the sound of his fist hitting Ryan’s jaw made him sick to his stomach. But he was free- he was free, that was all that mattered, so he ignored it, turning and bolting before they could try again.

Geoff shouted something, but he didn’t listen. The halls blurred by in a haze of red and gold as he pushed his legs to their limit, taking turns at random and only stopping when he didn’t have a fucking clue where he was.

Too close, he was still too close. He had to get out of the building.

Signs directed him towards the elevator and he headed that way as fast as he could, ignoring the jack-rabbit fast pounding of his heart in his chest and the way he couldn’t stop rolling his shoulders.

He’d just slapped the down button when he heard low voices approaching.

“- closest elevator, maybe we can catch up.”

“Jack said he’d keep an eye on the east exit, Ray’s watching the booth, and I can’t get ahold of Gavin, so we’re going to have to hurry-”

A loud ding that almost made his soul leave his body announced the elevator’s arrival and the voices immediately cut off. After a second, he could hear quick footsteps and just like that his heart rate tripled.

Two doors down, there was a very large sign that read ‘Stairs’. Quickly, Michael leaned into the elevator and slapped the button for the ground floor, then booked it for the stairs, trying to move as quickly and quietly as he could.

Fortunately, the elevator doors shutting hid the sound of his footsteps and the opening and closing of the door to the stairwell. He took the steps upward two at a time until he was a level above the door he’d come out, then pressed himself back into the corner and tried to swallow his panting breaths.

The door directly below him banged open, exactly what he’d been dreading. Squeezing his eyes shut and taking morbid comfort in the pain that pulsed in his head, he tried not to move or breathe or even think too loudly.

“I’m going to try to cut him off,” that was Ryan’s voice and it didn’t sound slurred or anything, so Michael probably hadn’t hit him as hard as he thought and he was _not relieved by that_. “Keep trying Gavin, he’s definitely down there somewhere.”

Geoff’s voice was tight when he answered, “Hurry, or we’re never going to be able to find him again,” and Michael’s heart sank like a stone.

Waiting was hard when all he wanted to do was _run_ , but he forced himself to stay perfectly still until the door clicked shut after Geoff and Ryan’s footsteps from below faded into nothingness. Then he headed up.

One level higher, he dove back into the tangled hallways. The hotel had elevators that were way the fuck away from each other, if he could get to one of the far ones and get down to the parking garage where he and Ryan had come in, he could head out that way and avoid the guys completely.

It worked, for the most part. He crossed what felt like half the city via hotel hallways and found an elevator that had to be on the opposite side of the building from the first one. The parking garage entrance had been on the… third level? Maybe? Whatever, he’d start there.

When the elevator doors opened again, he was happy to find he’d been right about the third floor. For about half a second.

Because when the doors slid open, Gavin was standing there.

He wasn’t looking up, he was fiddling with a strap on his backpack, trying to adjust it, and Michael had one brief spark of hope that he’d be able to slip past and Gavin would write him off as another convention goer without looking up.

But no, Gavin finally noticed the elevator door was open, saw him, and lit up like it was Christmas.

“Michael! Michael, listen, you won’t believe this, you know what Geoff did? He- oi!”

Michael really, _really_ should have known better than to try to use speed against Gavin. As hyperactive as he seemed to be, there was no way his reaction time wouldn’t have been a fraction of a normal person’s.

Grunting when he was yanked to a halt by a grip on his backpack, he snapped a glare over his shoulder. “ _What_?”

Eyes wide, Gavin slowly let go of the backpack. “Michael?”

Rolling his shoulder, Michael pushed forward again, scowling despite the pain in his face when he heard, “No- wait!” and loping footsteps hurrying after him as he stormed off toward the parking garage.

“What happened?” Gavin demanded, keeping pace with him irritatingly easily as he passed through the heavy door and the air chilled around them. “Did Ryan say something weird? You don’t have to worry, he _is_ nice, really, did you know- here’s a funny story- did you know he used to be-”

“ _Gavin_ ,” Michael growled, clenching his fists in his pockets. “Leave. Me. Alone.”

“But you’re leaving?” the Brit sounded so honestly confused. “Did Geoff not get a chance to talk to you yet? He said he was going to, when you quit kipping, you really need to tal-”

“Yes, he talked to me!” Michael exploded, whirling around to face his persistent shadow, who stumbled over what looked like half a piece of gravel in his haste to avoid a collision.

Recovering, Gavin stared at him, uncomprehending. “So… so why are you _leaving_? Did you need to go get something? I’ll come-”

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” Michael interrupted, voice vibrating from somewhere deep inside his chest, where the heat was starting to drive away the ice again. “Do you think I’d really believe that five guys who I met _three days_ ago would want to give me a job playing video games for a living? Really? I don’t know what the hell you guys were planning on when we got back to wherever you’re from, but I sure as _fuck_ am not-”

“ _What_?!” Somehow, Gavin’s eyes managed to defy the laws of physics and biology and actually get bigger. “Wha- _no_ , Michael! Michael, no, whatever you’re thinking, it’s – wait!” When Michael made to turn back towards the ramp that would take him to the exit, ten long fingers curled around his right wrist and locked into place.

Inhaling deeply through his nose, he clenched his other hand into a tight fist so he wouldn’t reach into the side pocket of his bag and pull out his last knife. The bruise on Gavin’s jaw was still stark under the garage’s fluorescent light and, despite what the evidence might say, Michael was not actually _that_ much of an asshole. “Let go of me,” he ordered, slowly, so there was no way he could be misunderstood.

“Austin,” was what Gavin came back with. “Austin, Texas. That’s where we’re from. We’re Achievement Hunter, we work at RoosterTeeth. The job sounds mental, and it is, but we’re _real_. I _promise_.”

Michael tried to yank his arm free, but Gavin just went with the motion, circling him and not loosening his grip at all. “Let _go of me_ , Gavin!”

“Our last panel is tomorrow at noon!” Gavin was talking even faster now, like he knew he didn’t have much time. “We’re checking out before the panel and going to the airport right after, our flight leaves at three!”

It was so abrupt when he released his grip that Michael stumbled backwards a step before stopping and staring at him.

Gavin actually looked _serious_. “You can go. I won’t stop you. But come back. _Please_ , come back with us. Or,” his expression crumpled, “or just. Just don’t think- don’t think whatever you are. We’re not that. We wouldn’t hurt you. You’d be… you’d be safe with us. If you wanted."

Michael was incapable of processing a single fucking word of that. All he could focus on was that he took one step back, then another, and Gavin didn’t follow him. Just stared at him with that same raw expression.

Gavin didn’t follow him when he bolted down the ramp either.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I waited nearly a full week, that's progress. I wound up scrapping the one and a half chapters I had saved up because something riddlemyfiddle said made me look at the whole setup in a different way and I decided to do everything differently. And it is SO MUCH BETTER, so shout out to them for shifting my paradigm!
> 
> Happy Valentine's to all~! I'm sorry for the emotional trauma! I mean, this chapter is pretty long, but, yeah, sorry! <3 <3 <3

It took Michael two days to cave and look them up.

He spent the first day pissed off.

No, that wasn’t the right term. Anyone could be pissed off, seeing bad grammar pissed some people off. No. He was _furious_.

When he stopped running, he was in an area he didn’t recognize, it was freezing cold, and he had no idea what time it was or when the sun would be out. Normally, shelter would have been his first priority, but he was still so hopped up on adrenaline that rational thought wasn’t at all within his skillset.

Spending a good twelve hours stalking around shady parts of New York filled with rage was not the safest thing in the world to do, but no one approached him. Not even the muggers he saw hanging around the mouths of alleys. It was almost a disappointment, because the heat under his skin was fogging his head and making it hard to think and maybe if he just _did_ something he’d be able to breathe again.

By the time the sun came up, he was still just as frustrated, but the energy his anger had lent him was beginning to fade. The last thing he wanted to do was let his guard down, especially then, but he _needed_ to rest.

God, why the fuck did he need so much rest lately, what the hell was wrong with him?

But he didn’t want to be anywhere they could find him. So that meant no heading back to Jersey, not yet anyway. Fucking Ryan had found him there once already, he wasn’t going to take chances.

Unfortunately, being in a different location meant he knew jack shit about where was even relatively safe to take a few seconds to rest. He could only really trust public places, but no way in hell was he letting his guard down around that many people. And he wouldn’t be able to sleep with that much going on, that much _noise_ and _movement_ and-

There was a giant ad for the New York Public Library in front of him. A huge fucking building with plenty of corners to hide in where people _had_ to be quiet.

About time he got a goddamn break.

His clothes were still new enough and clean enough that he didn’t attract much attention walking in, though he had to be careful of how he stepped because the rubber sole of his right shoe was almost completely off at that point and would slap against the ground or trip him up if he wasn’t careful.

The whole place was so shiny and fancy looking that his skin crawled with the urge to get the hell out before someone made him. But he knew what he looked like just then, with his beanie and jacket and the backpack slung over one shoulder. He looked like a normal college kid. He could get away with this.

Finding a fucking map for the place was his biggest problem, but once he did, he had a list of every section on every floor in every building. There were boring sections, which were good, but his best bet was finding a study cubicle. He could just put his head down there and pretend to have fallen asleep on accident.

The great thing about libraries was that people avoided looking at each other, even more than they usually did. No one wanted to make eye contact that might invite a conversation in a library. It took Michael less than twenty minutes to find a table in a little-used corner, prop his backpack up so the side cushioned by clothes was facing him, and pass the fuck out.

It was sort of like the car ride with Ryan, just less comfortable. He kept drifting in and out, jumping just slightly enough towards consciousness whenever he heard something a bit too close before brushing it off and going back to sleep.

Someone knocking over an entire cart of books was what actually catapulted him back into full consciousness and had him sitting ramrod straight and searching for the source of the noise before he got a chance to so much as wipe the drool off his chin. Even when he caught sight of the dumbass apologizing and starting to pick up books, he couldn’t relax again, not with his heart hammering like it was.

A glance at one of the small windows showed that it had gotten _much_ darker. He’d gotten to the library pretty early in the morning, how long had he been asleep?

Three. That was when Gavin said their plane left, at three. So. So they were gone. They couldn’t find him now.

It sort of felt like there was static just under the surface of his skin, but the rest of him was angry. He couldn’t really thin, he was tired, and he was still angry. A quiet, almost desperate anger that didn’t make him feel vindicated at all, that he could barely hold on to, but _needed_ because once the anger left… he didn’t want to feel that.

He was pissed at Ray, for drawing him in. Pissed at Gavin, for getting grabbed. Pissed at Ryan for coming after him. Pissed at Jack for whatever the _fuck_ had happened the day before. Pissed at Geoff, for whatever ploy it was that had prompted him to lie so blatantly.

But mostly he was pissed at himself for buying into it all. How goddamn naïve could you get? He should have known better, he wasn’t fucking new to this. No one did something for nothing, especially not something so selfless. You had to be careful, or you’d wind up indebted and unable to say no.

He’d watched people go that route before. Accept a little help here, then not be able to turn down helping out with a ‘favor’ later. He’d seen pickpockets turn into drug runners turn into corpses that way. It was never even, you couldn’t get away from a debt owed, it wasn’t something you could flee unless you payed it off. And if you ran, or put it off, you just wound up owing more because of it. It didn’t matter who you were or what you did or didn’t want or what any shred of morality you’d managed to cling to was- you were fucked.

Yeah, well he wasn’t going to let himself get fucked over like that. He’d always avoided it and this time wasn’t any different. Them trying to trick him had levelled the debt anyway. A wrong to balance out an act of charity- they were even. No need to worry about that any more.

So why couldn’t he stop thinking about it?

The last train of the night was boarding when he got to the station and he barely managed to get in on time. Back to Jersey wasn’t exactly something to aspire to, but he knew the streets and the people and they knew him and at the very least he was on solid footing, which was more than could be said of anything else from the last four days.

God, had it only been four days since he met Ray? It felt like forever.

Riding the train usually either felt like the longest journey ever or the blink of an eye. It depended where your head was at.

Michael’s head was nowhere. It was empty, focused on nothing but the vibrating floor of the car under his feet, the cold press of the window against his cheek, the plaintive growling of his stomach. Right. He’d eaten yesterday, but he’d thrown it up. So it didn’t count, dammit, what a waste.

Jack had given him a sack of food, that first night. Stuff that would keep. That was weird, though. If they’d been planning on taking him back, they wouldn’t have given him something he’d need back out where he’d been. So maybe-

No. There was no way they’d been telling the truth. It was some kind of trick, right on top of every other time he’d been so sure they were sincere. He hadn’t been right then, he wasn’t going to try to twist it around to suit the way he’d hoped things were.

Biting the end of a granola bar off didn’t do much to satisfy the staticky, twitchy feeling building under his skin. It was good, one of those weird ones packed with nuts and dried fruit, but he could barely focus on it at all.

Now it was in his head. Now he was trying to look at every interaction, every exchange, every thought and muscle twitch that might explain why-

He didn’t want to know. He _really_ didn’t.

It was just as cold in Jersey as he’d remembered. Not snowing when he left the station this time, which was a plus.

But remembering the last time he’d been there made him duck into the nearest empty alley, set his backpack on the ground, and rummage around in it until his fingers hit cool metal.

Using a gun was pretty fucking high on the list of inevitable things he wasn’t looking forward to, but there wasn’t all that much he could do about it. If word had gotten around that he’d fucked with an established territory, then walked away from the outcome, he was going to be in trouble. Not that anyone would be jumping to asshole mugger’s defense or anything, it would just take him from being thought of as ‘don’t bother him and he won’t bother you’ to ‘unpredictable threat’, which was much, much worse.

Being a threat meant you were watched. Being a threat meant you were a problem. Being a threat meant someone might take you out just so they didn’t have to wonder about you anymore.

Michael was an old hand with guns. Before he’d known better, he’d fallen in with a few groups. Not gangs, not really, punk kids just fucked up enough to be dangerous. One of them had been obsessed with guns, especially the ones you could get on the street. He’d set up a little gun course in an abandoned warehouse and they’d all compete. It was the closest to good clean fun they were going to get. But then the guys had caught the notice of an actual gang and Michael got the fuck out.

Having someone notice you was bad. They either wanted you, or wanted you dead. Either way, he wasn’t going to be caught off guard.

Hiking up the back of his shirt, he checked the safety, then tucked the gun into his waistband at the small of his back. Keeping it at the bottom of his backpack where he wouldn’t be able to get it in a dangerous moment had been fucking stupid anyway. This was safer.

But he also slipped his last remaining switchblade up his sleeve before shouldering his backpack again. Maybe it was inevitable, but he preferred the knife fights. You could send a guy running instead of to the city morgue.

He was going to have to lose this fucking morality at some point, it just got him in to really shitty situations.

 

* * *

 

The second day, he did get in a fight.

He didn’t use his gun, which was probably a mistake. But the second he saw the two guys, huddled together at the mouth of the alley, the frustration and anger and back and forth in his head had just gone totally silent.

They were unfamiliar, probably new to things, if the obvious way they were lurking was any indication. Not a challenge, even if there were two of them.

The adrenaline was like a drug. A lurch in his chest, one hard heartbeat followed by a rapid pulse, skin going cold, then hot, everything fading away as they came at him.

Michael had slept and eaten, both within the last few hours, so a couple of doped up street thugs weren’t going to get him.

The fight ended with the guys running, long cuts open along their arms and ribs, one of them with a nice slash that went halfway across his face and would scar horribly. As for him, well.

Inhaling deeply informed him that his ribs were not broken, but holy shit he was going to have some bad bruises in the morning. Well, at least they were on the right side now, so it would kind of balance out. Really, his right side had taken the worst of it, what with the ribs and the way he’d been slammed into a dumpster. Normally that wouldn’t have been a problem, but the corner had lined up perfectly against his upper arm and slammed right into the whole bone lengthwise and he’d almost gotten a knife between if ribs for standing there in dazed pain instead of retaliating.

A day off had made him way softer than it should have.

He hated it.

Another thing he hated- the fight had drained his anger. The static was gone, which was a relief, but it had been drained out and replaced with… he wasn’t sure. The frustration was still sort of there, but the anger itself was gone and in its place was something worse.

A yawning black pit had opened in his stomach and weariness was trying to seep into his bones. It was _stupid_ , it wasn’t like he should have expected more than a betrayal, but…

God, he’d _liked_ the fucking assholes.

And everything he'd been given had the same symbol and his jacket had ‘Achievement Hunter’ scrawled across the front of it and he was so _scared_.

Because what if they’d been telling the truth?

Thinking it just made his stomach cramp worse, but he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop thinking about what that’d be like. To actually be able to live like that. It sounded too perfect, was too good a mental image, didn’t feel _real_.

But it wasn’t leaving him.

The library in New York had been a good idea. Finding a more local library was a pain in the ass, but it was also, fortunately, much shittier, so he didn’t really have to worry about his appearance.

Being fair, it wasn’t actually that bad inside. Yeah, the shelves were old and made of faded wood covered in nicks, the carpet was covered in all sorts of mysterious splotches, and the furniture was clearly less than a year from falling apart at the seams, but it was all clean. Very neat, without books and magazines lying around all over the place or random people like him looking for a place to warm up and get some answers.

It was… pretty damn abandoned, actually.

A low, curved counter seemed to serve as a front desk, but it too was abandoned, aside from a girl maybe just a little younger than him without a cloud of dark curls hiding her face as she thoughtfully tapped a pencil against what looked like a cheap paper booklet of puzzles. Her head lifted when he took a hesitant step forward and her eyes lit up when she smiled.

“Hey! Can I help you with something?”

That was… a weirdly friendly greeting for a guy with bruises covering half of his face. “Uhh…” he started, licking his chapped lips and trying to rearrange his thoughts into something, anything coherent. “I just wanted to use a computer?”

“Oh sure,” she stood and walked around the counter, gesturing for him to follow her deeper into the building. “Ours are pretty old, so I hope you’re not wanting to do anything too difficult. Oh!” Michael stopped dead at the shout, but the girl just snapped her fingers and jogged the few steps back to the counter, leaning over to grab something under it, then returning with an old pair of headphones that she pushed into his hands. “You’ll need those if you want to watch something, there’s no speakers installed.”

He’d had his hands deep in his pockets until he’d had to fumble to grab the headphones being shoved at him. There was no way that the girl- Maggie, her name was Maggie, there was a small name tag half hidden under the drawstring of her hoodie- there was no way Maggie hadn’t seen his split knuckles, but she didn’t falter in the slightest.

Small, high walled cubicles with very ancient computers indeed were lined up along a back wall. Going from the dust, they hadn’t seen use in quite some time.

It was actually starting to creep him out. “Why’s it so empty in here?”

Maggie gave him a sunny smile. “It’s not always, kids come by when school lets out. Most adults don’t come around, though.”

“Why? I mean,” he made a vague sort of gesture, hoping to encompass that fact that a place like this was a pretty big draw for people like him, before finally settling on, “it seems convenient.”

“Well,” curls flopping to one side as she tilted her head, she said, “that’s probably because Gramma pulled a shotgun on the last person who came in here and started causing trouble.”

Michael fell into the chair he’d been carefully lowering himself into, jarring the hell out of his ribs and grimacing, but recovering quickly enough to stare blankly at the fucking insane person in front of him. “ _What_?”

“Yeah. Really rude guy, trying to throw everyone else out but his people. Gramma gets annoyed with people like that. He hung around until we started to go home, so she had to fire buckshot into his feet. After that, people just sorta stopped coming around.” She shrugged, like she couldn’t fathom why that was true.

Jesus fucking Christ, had he started putting out a beacon that attracted crazy people? Not that the action wasn’t completely justified, but the casual way she seemed to regard it definitely was, “She won’t shoot at me though, right?”

Maggie giggled like he’d told a joke, “No, no, you’re not being rude or disturbing other patrons or anything. You’re fine. Did you need anything else?”

“No,” he replied, a little weakly. “No, I’m good.”

“Okay, well just let me know!” She gave a jaunty little wave and started back towards the front of the small building, then turned back just long enough to say, “By the way, I like your jacket!”

“Oh,” instinctively, he looked down at himself and was abruptly reminded of the reason he was actually there. A sort of anticipatory dread filled his stomach, replacing the blank confusion from seconds ago. Still, he managed, “Thanks. It was a gift.”

She tilted her head again and, for a second, he was worried she’d ask him something else, but she just smiled again and continued on her way.

The few minutes it took the ancient computer in front of him to boot up were absolute torture. The curl of dread in his chest was just getting worse and worse and he hated it. He didn’t even know why he was checking, really. He didn’t want to know. Anything he learned would suck because either he was right and he’d been tricked and everything they’d done and said had been a lie or…

… or he’d done something even worse.

Fortunately, Google was pretty quick on even the most ancient of machines, so he got the results for typing in ‘Achievement Hunter’ almost instantly.

Unfortunately, well… there _were_ results. A _lot_ of them.

It sort of felt like someone had sliced open his abdomen, cut out everything inside, and stitched him back up in the dark.

There was that goddamn green star again. All different kinds of versions of it, with the words ‘ACHIEVEMENT HUNTER’ underneath sometimes. A Twitter, a Wikipedia page (“ _Achievement Hunter is a video gaming website and a division of Rooster Teeth Productions…_ ”), a YouTube channel-

Wait. Wait…

Rooster Teeth. He’d heard of them before. Back when he was stuck in the computer lab after school, he’d watch a web series online. What was it called? … Red vs Blue?

That show had made him laugh until his face hurt long after he’d forgotten how to smile. And that was the company-

Shakily, he settled the ancient headphones on his head, fumbled the headphone jack until it connected properly, and clicked on the link that would take him to the YouTube channel.

Fifteen minutes later, he was breathing too fast and had to pause the video to squeeze his eyes shut and focus on his lungs.

Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.

They’d been telling the truth.

Oh… oh _God_.

He was such a shit person. What was _wrong_ with him? Those people had been so fucking awesome, had offered him that pipe dream of a job, and not only had he thrown it back in their faces, he’d accused them of being liars, manipulators-

He’d _punched Ryan_.

Dropping his head, Michael flexed his fingers against the desk, nails digging in to the cheap finish until flecks bunched up underneath them. Jaw flexing with effort, he ground his teeth and breathed shakily through them until the urge to throw up passed.

What an ungrateful _bastard_.

Should he do something? Was there even anything he could do to make up for that? Probably not. Almost definitely not. It wasn’t something that could be fixed with an apology email or a phone call (if he even had a number to call), it was too much, it was-

He clicked the next video in the sidebar.

Shame was a physical presence in his chest and his head, heating his face and making his eyes water. Every video made it progressively worse, but he couldn’t stop listening to them, watching them. The back and forth, the random ‘would you rather’ questions from Gavin and Geoff’s weird laughter, it made him feel like he was with them again.

There was a very real chance that he was never going to eat again, if his stomach kept flinching in on itself, but he was willing to risk it.

Somehow, he wound up on Geoff’s twitter account. The most recent post was from two days ago, Saturday afternoon, a video. The tweet itself just read: _“Gavin made a new friend. We’re thinking about keeping him.”_

Michael’s breath had already frozen in his lungs when he hit the play button. The seconds the old computer needed to buffer felt like an eternity, but then-

“ _I_ need _the grenades, Michael!”_

 _“What do you need the grenades_ for _, you can’t walk in a straight fucking_ line- _!_ ”

The headphones clattered against wood when he flung them off his head, pushing the chair away from the desk so quickly he almost tipped over backwards.

Shit. Goddamn fucking asshole bastard, why did Geoff have to post that? Why did Geoff have to remind him what he’d fucked up?

Hundreds of replies were attached to the damn thing. They were calling him _#RageQuit_ , even though his name had clearly been in the video and, according to one screenshot that had been sent in by a fan who apparently wanted him to suffer, he’d been trending for two hours.

In that moment, Michael kind of wanted the world to end, just so he didn’t have to process it all anymore.

But… but wasn’t it a good thing he’d fucked it up? Yeah, it was a pipe dream job and everything, but there was no fucking way he could have lived up to what they thought he’d be. It wasn’t like moving halfway across the country would make him a different person. He’d fucked it up here, he’d have fucked it up there too.

This way just meant he wouldn’t wind up stranded in Texas.

He exited Twitter almost violently and went to close YouTube, but the page he’d been trying to load, their uploaded videos tab, had finally come up. They’d released a new video while he’d been losing his mind, an episode of AHWU.

Right, it was a Monday.

So… so had they just filmed it? They had, right?

Shakily, he leaned forward to grab the mouse and click on it.

The headphones were still laying on the desk, so he could hear the distant familiarity of their voices, but he couldn’t make any words out. They’d definitely filmed it after getting back home, though. Gavin still had the bruise on his jaw, but it was starting to turn green-yellow and fade, so that was good.

Perspective switched between Geoff and Jack as they made whatever announcements there were for the week. It looked like Gavin used everyone he could as a jungle gym, because he managed to scale Jack and kneel on his shoulders without Jack even blinking before he fell off so abruptly that Michael winced and leaned forward, reaching for his headphones before the Brit popped back into frame, still as animated as ever.

Ray was in the background of the video, clearly focused on a game on his screen. Ryan was nowhere to be seen, but wasn’t that sort of a thing? Ryan didn’t want to be on AHWU?

Michael kind of wanted to see him. Just to make sure he was okay. He didn’t think he’d pulled that punch at all, and there was no telling when the next video that they filmed after their trip would come out, didn’t they film them all out of order?

But they seemed… fine. The same as ever.

That was good. If they forgot about him, that was for the best. He'd pushed them away. Even if he’d taken them up on their offer, he was pretty sure he’d forgotten how to be a real person a long time ago anyway. He’d have ruined everything.

He didn’t have any right to be sad.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's 2:30 in the morning. I've been writing all day. My brain is empty. My eyelids are literally trying to shut as I type this. Let us all pray to God I don't reread this chapter in the morning and decide to come back and tweak it, causing confusion amongst the masses. But I cannot actually comprehend my own words, so hey, have a chapter.
> 
> Your comments give me life and breath, I am sorry for the emotional distress, but not really. <3

He used his gun for the first time on the fourth day.

It didn’t seem like word hadn’t really gotten around about his ‘differences’ with Gavin’s mugger, but there was some hotshot zeroing in on the area that wanted _everyone_ but his guys out, whether they were with another gang or not.

When Michael’d first heard about him, he’d rolled his eyes and almost laughed. Maybe the guy thought he was hot stuff now, but there was nothing that brought people together like foiling a hostile takeover. The guy probably wouldn’t last another week.

Unfortunately, within that week, he found Michael.

Michael wasn’t sure what he wanted, except to kill him. There was sort of an implication that he was going to be an example, a warning to everyone who crossed the guy, blah fucking blah, it all devolved into screaming when he took out his gun and put a bullet in the guy’s knee.

It was just a warning shot and the guy had brought two goons as backup, but the speed at which Michael’d drawn, aimed, and fired the gun had them hesitate. The screaming of their boss eventually made them drag him away without attempting to retaliate, which was the best choice for everyone, really.

Then Michael spent twenty minutes leaning against the side of the alley, swallowing bile and catching his breath. Hesitating between revealing his weapon and firing it would have killed him immediately. Showing weakness would have killed him later. Using his knives would have killed him slowly.

But he’d just shot a guy. Non-lethal, or at least he’d been trying. Probably he’d live, as long as the bullet hadn’t hit an artery.

His hands shook as he flicked the safety again, then tucked the gun back into its hiding spot.

There was a very good chance he’d just gotten himself involved in some nasty politics, but he could reasonably hope that it would pass. He hadn’t fucked with any of the actual gangs in the area and taking out a new guy vying for space would probably only make them respect him a little more.

But again, getting noticed got you killed.

Maybe he should have just sic’ed Maggie’s grandmother on the guy.

The thought made him laugh in the middle of the street, so he could add ‘batshit’ to the probable list of traits people assigned to him. Maybe thinking he was crazy would keep them away.

Then again, maybe a little bit of a war was just what he needed.

He’d gone back to the library yesterday. And he was headed that way again when he got waylaid by the dumbass brigade.

Watching the videos made him _hurt_ , but he also felt so much better when he could hear their voices (and how had he not recognized Geoff’s? Grif didn’t exactly have your average voice). How did that make any fucking sense?

Maggie didn’t seem to mind his presence. She’d wander over and chat occasionally, just seemed happy to have someone her own age around. Apparently, her grandmother had run the library since the Cretaceous period, more or less, and she’d hired Maggie on when she was old enough.

The grandmother sounded terrifying, but Michael had never actually met her. He thought maybe she’d been around once, though. That first day, Monday, he’d gotten… pretty worked up. Worn himself out and woke up with his eyes aching and his head pillowed on his arms.

A small Styrofoam cup filled with some spicy kind of tea and honey had been sitting at his elbow, still steaming. He thought he’d seen someone, someone shorter than Maggie, moving back through the shelves out of the corner of his sight, but they’d been gone by the time he’d rubbed his eyes clean and gotten his glasses on.

He didn’t spend all his time watching the videos and wishing for the cold embrace of death, though. Okay, yeah, he spent most of his time doing that and slowly catching up on RvB, but still it _was_ a library.

Realistically, he should have been using the limited daylight hours and the relative safety they provided to find a new place to stay. He had bigger things to worry about. But he didn’t want to leave. It was… quiet in the library. Trouble wasn’t a problem because it knew to stay away. He could just watch the videos and, when that got to be too much, pick up something to read.

Reading hadn’t ever really been something he’d done in his spare time, but he’d also never had the opportunity before. Not that he was jumping feet first into classical literature or anything. He’d found the small section of manga they had in a far corner and was steadily making his way through it.

And if he sometimes fell asleep sprawled on one of the overstuffed couches that smelled like mothballs and woke up with a tattered afghan over his legs? Well, he’d help Maggie reshelf books now and then and no one would mention it. Especially if she randomly decided she really wanted pizza and asked him to help her eat it so she wouldn’t devour the whole thing by herself and make herself sick.

She saw right through him, but always traded little things for help around the library, so they were never out of balance. The way she expertly walked the line made him really wonder where she learned it.

He didn’t wonder too much, though. Lessons learned the hard way had a tendency to stick, he wasn’t going to get attached to random people he barely knew, not again.

Because he found himself wanting to tell Jack, when the pizza didn’t fuck him up later, so he’d know Michael wasn’t as fragile as he probably thought. It just reinforced his urge to stay away. Having something or someone that made you both happy and cripplingly ashamed when you thought of them was just not worth it. Staying away was the best option for everyone.

But the wind made the cold worse and chapped his lips and dried out his fingers until the tips started to crack and he still hadn’t found a place to stay when he searched at night. So his resolution to stay away from the library never lasted longer than a few hours.

 

* * *

 

On the fifth day, he woke up from a nap he hadn’t meant to take, saw a man sitting in the armchair three feet from his head, and almost died of cardiac arrest.

Three different curses vied to spill out his mouth, but he wasn’t conscious enough to pick one, so all that came out was a jumbled up syllable as he lurched away, pushing hard against the back of the couch. His ribs clenched in protest and he hissed, pressing a hand against them like there was any way that would help.

The man had been tapping away at a phone he held in his lap, but lifted his head at Michael’s less than graceful return to consciousness.

Living a life where you had to be wary of everyone, you learned to trust your instincts a lot and recognize certain looks to people. Some of the ones out there seemed perfectly nice, said all the right things, made all the right gestures, were perfectly poised and on top of it- until they were behind closed doors. They were master manipulators and there was an air to them, a sort of emptiness you could see in their eyes, no matter how much their face was smiling. Looking at them made your skin crawl, when you knew what you were seeing. You couldn’t get away from them fast enough.

The man sitting in the armchair gave off a feeling that was the polar opposite of that one.

He had a round, open face, brown hair that was only long enough to hint at the possibility of curls, bright eyes outlined by black-framed glasses and the faintest hint of crow’s feet, and a short beard clinging to his jaw. There was an openness, a familiarity to his face that had Michael fighting the urge to relax because he didn’t feel at all threatened, which was a minor fucking miracle.

Then the guy opened his mouth and said, “You’re Michael Jones, right?” and Michael went rigid again.

He’d have been calculating the distance to the door under any other circumstance, but only half his attention was on the man’s words. The other half was on his voice.

“You’re Church,” he said quietly, mindful of the fact that they were still, in fact, in the library and he had no wish to meet a shotgun-toting old woman any time soon.

The man grinned, the corners of his eyes crinkling with the force of it. “Good, so you know RvB at least.”

“I looked it up,” Michael admitted. “A couple of days ago. I watched it when I was in school but. I forgot.”

Shifting in his seat, the man held out a hand, “Burnie Burns.”

Michael shook Burnie’s hand automatically, mutely since apparently the guy already knew his name. Oh… and the situation was starting to really sink into his sleep-stupid brain. Burnie was here. He knew where Michael was. He worked the same place the Achievement Hunters did, was close friends with at least Geoff, probably the others too. If _he_ was here-

“Relax,” Burnie sounded kind of amused as he sat back in his chair, slipping his phone into his pocket. “It’s just me, I didn’t rat you out to the guys.”

Okay, but… Michael narrowed his eyes. “How did _you_ find me?”

“Maggie.” Burnie turned and waved over one shoulder, to where the front desk was just barely visible through a gap in the shelves. Maggie, who was in no way attempting to hide the fact that she was spying on them, waved back enthusiastically. “She tweeted Geoff a couple days ago to ask if you were the same guy from his video. But he was fucking plastered and I was holding onto his phone, so. Here we are.”

Not totally sure if he felt betrayed or just annoyed, Michael leaned over into Maggie’s line of sight and held up both middle fingers. She winked and blew him a kiss. Bitch.

Burnie laughed, reminding Michael that he was, in fact, there. “Don’t be a dick.”

Michael settled back into sitting position, straightening his shirt and jacket to make sure they still covered his gun. A quick glance confirmed his backpack remained untouched at the other end of the couch, his beanie still on top of it. “You didn’t tell Geoff?”

“Nah,” Burnie said, crossing his legs and settling in. “I had most of the story at that point. Geoff called me before offering you the job in the first place, but it sounds like he fucked that up, so I thought it might be a good idea to just talk to you myself.”

“What?” Geoff fucked up? “No, Geoff didn’t- I was the one who-”

Burnie held up a hand. “I’m not here to argue whose fault that clusterfuck was. He’ll have to take that one. I’m just here to explain things a little better so you can actually have all the info to decide whether you want the job or not. But it sounds like you’ve googled enough to find out they weren’t lying to you, which helps.”

Michael’s brain stopped dead and fell over. “What?”

“I get it, playing video games for a living sounds like total bullshit-”

“You still want to give me a job?” he cut in sharply, because he couldn’t have heard that right-

Burnie blinked behind his glasses. “Oh. Right. Should’ve led with that. Yeah, offer’s still open.”

“You _can’t_ be fucking serious,” Michael argued, riding a line between angry and desperate. “You can’t- I _hit Ryan-_ ”

“And Ryan will be the first to admit he deserved that.”

“-I was such a fucking jackass to them-”

“You were scared and we’re all jackasses, they were over it before you left the hotel room.”

“-and I don’t get why you want _me_ , anyway.” Part of him was screaming that he should shut the fuck up and go with it, but this was important. “You’ve already got five Achievement Hunters and they all know each other, it’s moronic to throw another guy in just because you feel bad-”

“Whoa, okay.” Burnie leaned forward, planting his feet on the ground and resting his elbows on them so he could look Michael dead in the eye. He held up a finger. “First, they’ve been looking for another full-time hunter for a while now. There’s a few other people behind the scenes who fill in when they need to even the teams or something, but they really prefer behind the scenes work and that’s a big role to commit to. That’s why they were even here when you met Ray. Second, if you think the guys haven’t already imprinted on you like baby ducks, you’re fucking blind. Third, have you _seen_ the amount of views that video of you and Gavin has gotten? Not only are you funny as shit, but the internet loves you.”

“What the fuck- why? I’m an asshole.” Again, he’d had to own that one for quite a while.

“If the internet didn’t love assholes, no one in the damn company would have a job.”

This was crazy. These people were insane. After what he did, what he said, after _everything,_ they _still_ -

“I’m not going to make you decide right this second.” Burnie pulled out his wallet and starting flicking through it. “Putting someone on the spot about this would be a dick move. Ah, here we go.” He flicked a small card towards Michael, who caught it automatically. “I got you a hotel room for tonight. Already paid for it, so you might as well use it. No one else is going to.”

Michael stared at the keycard in his hands, thought about the one still in his back pocket that he’d accidentally stolen when he ran out on the guys. This one came in a paper sleeve with the hotel name and address printed on it and a room number scrawled on the provided line. “You next door?”

“I’m not even in the same hotel.” At Michael’s surprised look, Burnie shrugged. “ _You’re_ the one that’s gotta make this choice, man. I’m not gonna hover. Sleep on it. Meet me back here at eight tomorrow morning. If you need more time to decide, that’s fine too. I’ve gotta fly back tomorrow, but I’ll give you my cell number and you can call me whenever you decide, whatever you decide.”

“Why are you doing this?” Michael asked, dropping his gaze back to the keycard. “Why the hell are you spending so much time and money and effort just to give me a _choice_?” It had to be asked, even if he wasn’t totally sure he wanted the answer.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Burnie shrug and stand. “You'll be worth it, I can tell. They could tell too. Geoff wouldn't have brought anyone in that he thought wouldn't fit, not when everyone else on the team means so much to him. And he doesn't get invested in many people, so I'd trust him even if I _couldn't_ see it. Just think about it, okay? I'll see you in the morning.”

And then he walked out. The door hadn’t even closed behind him before Maggie bolted over.

“Sooooo, what’d you two talk about? Are you going to join Achievement Hunter? Please say yes, I need more videos like that in my life.”

Michael just gave her a flat look, trying to ignore how his whole head felt overheated, how his heart was pounding, double, triple time, how he sort of felt weightless. “If you knew who I was, why the fuck didn’t you say anything? Why ask Geoff instead of me?”

“Well, I didn’t _really_ know who you were. I just thought you might be the Rage Quit guy after you dropped that box on your foot that time and yelled at it for four minutes. And I asked Geoff because you lie.”

“Uh huh, and what was it that kept you from telling me Burnie was coming?”

She held up a box. “He promised to sign my copy of the Blood Gulch Chronicles.”

“I fucking hate you, you _whore_.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *groaning of the undead*  
> Guess who had the week from hell~?  
> I was really up in the air about whether to post this whole thing because the first scene is long enough to be its own chapter and I wanted to have some more leeway saved up for the future, but tbh if I don't post this now I'm just going to keep rewriting it until the end of time and then the reunion scene will NEVER get written and we can't let that happen, now can we? Besides, I wasn't going to post a chapter where essentially nothing happens, so what the hell, have a super long chapter while I go pass out.  
> <3 <3 <3

The hotel room was empty, with a heavy door, a deadbolt, and a latch, so no one could get in even if they had a keycard. That made him feel slightly better about the whole thing.

It wasn’t as nice a hotel as the one from the convention, but it was a thousand steps above anywhere else he’d stayed in recent memory. Burnie’d gotten him a room with just one bed, and it was probably the biggest fucking bed he’d ever seen. There was a flatscreen TV, a dresser, an armchair, and a small table in the corner.

Catching sight of something on the night table that held a digital alarm clock and a phone, Michael wandered over carefully and looked at it.

It was a neon green post-it with the words “ **FOR TAKEOUT** ” scrawled on it with an arrow pointing to two twenty dollar bills that were tucked halfway under a collection of local takeout menus. Because Burnie was a sneaky fuck, apparently.

Peeling the post-it off the table, he just looked at it for a minute. The letters had been gone over multiple times, until the words where thick and stark against the paper. Where did Burnie even _get_ a post-it? There was a pad of hotel stationery _right on the night table_.

He sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, staring blankly at the little piece of paper stuck to his fingers.

Even though he knew it was for the best, the amount of times he’d wished he’d just heard Geoff out in the last few days was embarrassing. And now here was another Rooster Teeth employee, doing shit for him and offering him a job.

With Geoff, he’d thought it was just a spur of the moment thing. But Geoff had called Burnie first, had talked to his boyfriends about it. And apparently he’d told Burnie everything that had happened when they got back to Texas.

And then Burnie had come looking for him. It was a Thursday, still the work week, he would have had to take time off, buy a plane ticket, two hotel rooms, get the cash he snuck into Michael’s room-

He felt sort of blank. Not empty, just… he couldn’t wrap his head around it. It was all so _much_.

But-

“ _You’ll be worth it, I can tell._ ”

The post-it crinkled in protest when his fingers clenched, so he returned it to its spot on the table and then, well.

A closet of sorts was built into the wall between the bed and the bathroom. The sliding doors of it were huge mirrors, so he found himself just staring at his own reflection.

Over the last few days, he’d had to really look at himself for the first time in a long time and, sitting there staring into the mirror, he found himself doing it again.

He _was_ thinner than he’d realized, and he was surprised the degree that it showed in his face. There were still blotches of dark colors around his eye, but he thought they’d lightened a bit, aside from the stark line from the lens jabbing him. The cut on his ear had thinned a lot, actually. It still hurt, but it didn’t look nearly as gruesome as before.

The person in the mirror didn’t really resemble how he remembered himself at all. He wasn’t angry about that, or sad, or anything, really. He just stared, like maybe it would click better if he gave it time.

A sigh forced its way out of his lungs as he fell backwards onto the bed with a _thump_ to stare at the ceiling instead. Whether or not he recognized himself, that was the person that the guys saw when they looked at him. And he didn’t want the last time they saw him to have been when he was angry and embarrassed and afraid.

But at the same time, who said they even wanted to see him? Burnie said he hadn’t told them, if they didn’t know, it was possible they weren’t okay with it.

And he wouldn’t blame them. He’d _attacked_ _them_ , when they’d only been trying to offer him a job. If it were _him_ , he certainly wouldn’t want to meet up with the crazy kid again.

Adding to that the fact that he hadn’t really _meant_ to attack Ryan…

He swallowed hard. Even under the circumstances, even knowing he’d needed to get _out_ … that had been… he hadn’t thought about it before doing it. It was like his body had moved on its own, like when he’d jumped away from them sometimes, but _worse_.

There was something _wrong_ with him.

Before, when he’d fought, when he’d attacked first, he’d been in control. It hadn’t been at all involuntary. Even when he was scared out of his mind, even at his worst moment, lying in wait, too small and too scared to run, knowing his only chance at freedom was a heavy object and good aim, he’d been completely clear-headed.

But when Ryan grabbed him…

Lifting his right hand, he curled it around his left arm, almost without thinking. Ryan had just been wanting him to slow down and _listen_ , but it had felt like… It was hard to put into words. It just made him feel like he wasn’t a _person_ anymore. Like he was powerless.

Worst of all, he couldn’t bring himself to believe that, put in that same situation again, he’d have done anything differently. If he’d been in his right mind, sure, probably. But the last few days, he’d reacted without thinking several times. At first it had just been flinching, a skin-crawling feeling. Then he’d started jumping away. Then he’d slapped Jack’s hand off his arm and clocked Ryan in the face. And he hadn’t deliberately decided to do _any_ of it. It had just fucking _happened_.

What he _wanted_ was to go back with Burnie. What he _wanted_ was to see the guys, to apologize, even if they didn’t want him anymore. The very least he could do was apologize, wasn’t it? They deserved that.

But they also deserved to not have to worry about how he might react to any given thing. Christ, just the thought that they might conceivably be _afraid_ of something he’d do made him want to launch himself into the river.

What he wanted aside, he had to face the fact that there was a very real chance he was dangerous to the guys.

He needed to apologize. But he also needed to be sure that he didn’t give them any reason to be worried about the way he’d act. No one deserved to have to be around someone that made them nervous every day.

Fuck. What was he going to _do_?

His stomach let out a hesitant grumble and he propped himself up on his elbows to glare at it. He didn’t _want_ to eat. He wanted an answer to all his problems, food was not even on his priority list at the moment.

But now he was thinking about it and the grumblings were getting decidedly less hesitant and Burnie _had_ left him forty dollars. If he was reading Burnie correctly, there was no way the man would take that money back and he’d feel like shit for not using it for the purpose Burnie had left it for.

The idea of going and getting food right now when there were so many more important things to think about pissed him off, but if he didn’t it was just going to distract him for the foreseeable future. Sure, Burnie had probably expected him to get food delivered, if the takeout menus were anything to go by, but fuck if he was going to pay a delivery fee to get out of _walking_.

Of course, he regretted every choice he’d ever made when, after leaving his room and heading down the stairs, he stepped out into the hotel parking lot and the cold wind stabbed through his clothes like they weren’t even _there_.

He entered the first restaurant he came across that wasn’t fast food (hey, if he was going to have a choice in his meals, he was getting some decent goddamn food), ordered a roast beef sandwich the size of his head and some soup (he didn’t care what kind, he just wanted something _hot_ ), and booked it back to the hotel as fast as he could.

By the time he got back, he was shivering so hard he could barely swipe the keycard to let himself in the building. Even perpetually cold hotels felt warmer than a February night in Jersey when you only had a light jacket.

It was early enough that he hadn’t had to worry too much about getting jumped on his little outing, but late enough that he, thankfully, didn’t run into anyone as he made his way back to his room.

The cold seemed to cling to his skin even when he was back in his room, with the door securely locked and bolted behind him. He curled his fingers around the hot container of soup and that helped a little, but it always seemed to take so long to warm back up after being out in the cold and he _hated_ it.

Lots of kinds of pain could be shaken off. Pain was all mental, all you had to do was focus on it, start questioning it, and at the _very_ least it would take the edge off. But the cold was something different. It sank into your _bones_ , every old injury you thought had healed began to ache again, and you _couldn’t_ ignore it, because if you tried, if you left it alone too long, it could very well kill you. And you’d never see it coming.

Wasn’t Texas supposed to be warm? Not in winter, of course, but in general? Wasn’t it supposed to be warmer?

He shook his head, a little disgusted with himself that he’d been almost about to add that to the reasons he should go. Something that was only about his personal comfort had no fucking place in this choice.

The food was good, even if he couldn’t finish it all at once. He remembered what had happened at the other hotel after too much pizza, plus it was enough food to divide up into several meals, if he paced it. The soup had to go all at once, but the sandwich was as big as promised and roast beef was just fine cold.

He _still_ wasn’t warm by the time he finished eating, so he gave up on waiting for it to happen and marched into the bathroom to start the shower. The itch of dirt building up again after he’d finally gotten clean had been bothering him the last few days anyway. And god forbid he not take advantage of hot water while he had it.

Least of all because of his arm.

It was doing okay, he thought. He’d stolen basic first aid supplies from a drug store on the third day, because there was some stuff you just couldn’t compromise on. It was just that he hadn’t quite known what to do with it. Cleaning cuts, making sure to bandage things properly, that was fine. But the one on his arm was pretty serious and he had no idea what he could or couldn’t do with the butterfly stitches on there.

He’d seen a box at the drugstore, read the back, knew he could get them wet, but had no idea when he was supposed to take them off, or even _how_. On top of that, he knew he needed to change the bandage, but he didn’t know how often and wanted to conserve his supplies.

Once before he’d gotten badly hurt, worse than this, and he’d survived that fine on his own. But he honest to fucking god did not remember how. The cuts that gave him the scars low on his stomach and side, from the broken window, had been deep and bad and had gotten infected, which was part of the reason the scars were so ugly. The whole recovery process had been a blur of heat and confusion and he had no idea how he’d managed to not die horribly in an alley somewhere.

Taking care of stuff more serious than a minor knife cut had always kind of been trial by fire. Still, he thought it was okay. The skin around it was kind of red, but not too much, just like it was irritated, maybe. He should probably let it air out for a while. The hot water would probably help too.

It definitely _stung_ , when it hit the cut, but antiseptic stung too, so that was probably good, right?

Showers were great. Hot showers were the best. The water cut through the cold and made him sag against the wall as the tension bled out of him, to the point where he sat down in the tub, just in case.

The window scars were thick and had a smooth, but uneven texture when he ran his fingers over them. All he could remember from that was heat and fear and pain and fever-fogged fucking stupidity. And still, he’d managed to survive.

It was hard to really pin down the emotion, the thought, the words that stirred up in his mind. Mostly… he didn’t know how to be a _person_ anymore, not a real one, anyway. He remembered what it was like, to be normal, sort of. It had been a long time ago, fifteen years or something like that, but he did remember it.

Even still, that was when he was a _kid_. He hadn’t even been a teenager at the time. Just the memory of that was worth jack shit when it came to being a fully functional adult member of fucking society. He didn’t even know what he didn’t know. The amount of fuck-ups he’d make would be ridiculous.

And even with all those reasons, really good reasons, he was still scared to fall asleep in case he didn’t wake up in time to meet Burnie.

Burnie’d said he didn’t have to decide right away. But if he didn’t, when would he? What could possibly give him an actual answer on this, if he waited? Putting it off wouldn’t work, he had a feeling this wouldn’t go away if he just didn’t give an answer. These people had made it pretty clear that they were stubborn.

God, how arrogant was that? Believing they’d come back for him for a _second_ time?

Sighing, he drew his knees up so he could rest his head on them and just let the hot water rain down on his back.

The problem, the real problem, was that he had to choose between what he wanted, what _they_ wanted, if Burnie was to be believed, and what was realistic. And the reality was that he was dangerous, apparently a little unstable, had no real skills to be any kind of useful employee, and would be like a fish trying to walk on land.

He wanted to go, but what he wanted didn’t mean jack shit if it was bad for the guys. But, if they really wanted him there too… He owed them. This way, he could at least try and pay back a _fraction_ of it. And an apology wouldn’t even scratch the surface of what he’d have to do to make up for how he’d acted the last time they’d seen each other, but he absolutely needed to make one.

There were really no good choices that he had right then. Going to Texas would almost definitely end with him having to hitchhike back to Jersey with the knowledge that he’d fucked up _again_ , but if he never left in the first place not only would he _still be in Jersey_ , but he wouldn’t have even tried to make things right with the guys, which would make him more of a dick than he already was.

The whole job thing sounded too good to be true. As a person who hadn’t spent the last decade with his head up his ass, he knew it probably _was_ too good to be true. Not that he thought they were lying anymore- there was no way something this elaborate _wasn’t_ real. Just…

One video didn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things, did it? How could they actually know if hiring him would be a good decision?

And hanging out for twenty-four hours did not automatically mean he’d fit right in with the guys long-term.

The last thing he wanted was to have this fail on him if he decided to go for it. He didn’t want to let them down, didn’t want them to keep him on just because they felt like they had to-

But he also didn’t want to let himself believe in something that was too good to be true. It had happened before, more times than it should have because he used to be such a goddamn gullible moron, and he knew better than to take chances that were as good as the one in front of him, because they weren’t _real_.

And even if the trick wasn’t something that could hurt him, the disappointment and anger just wasn’t worth it.

Those guys, though… he knew they were telling the truth, now. And after everything he’d put them through, shouldn’t he at least _try_ to make it up to them? If this was something that would make _them_ happy, he had to at least give it a try, didn’t he?

But what if he fucked it up and wound up doing more harm than good-

Burying his hands in his too-long hair, he dug the tips of his fingers into his scalp.

Why was trying to do the right thing so damn _hard_?

 

* * *

 

The hotel bed was huge and comfortable and Michael barely got any sleep.

Sure, he drifted once or twice, but he always jerked back when he shifted position and felt the mattress dip under him, convinced he was going to fall through it. It was fucking moronic, but his sleep-stupid brain didn’t seem to think so.

However, Fate had apparently come back from her little vacation and felt like fucking with him some more because when he finally _did_ drift off for more than a few seconds, it was for less than an hour and he woke up at five after eight.

Stiffness from his bruises did not slow him down at _all_ as he leapt out of the bed and started grabbing his things. Most was already packed up and ready to go, but he had to go into the bathroom and yank the green shirt from over the shower rod. He’d washed it in the bathtub the night before and hung it up to dry and it wasn’t quite there, but he didn’t have time for that, just pulled it on.

No, he did not care at all to examine why he’d decided he needed at least one of his shirts to be clean that morning, kindly fuck off.

The library was a half hour’s walk away.

It was freezing cold outside, still pretty dark, but he managed to make the run in ten minutes.

Frigid air was a physical force trying to hold him back as he ran, pulling at his hair and clothes and _eyes_ , diving into his throat and drying out his mouth. The loose sole of his right shoe tripped him up and he almost tasted the fucking concrete several times, but he just kept _going_.

His lungs fucking _hated_ him, but he didn’t care at all when he rounded the corner at speed and saw Burnie, leaning against a car pulled up to the curb, phone in hand, tapping away at it again. He raised his head, saw Michael, and smiled, giving a little wave and tucking his phone away.

It was worth it.

Michael just stood there at the corner, staring, one hand braced against the faded brick wall of a building that had been abandoned for at least a decade. A deep breath stuttered in his throat, cold and dry and desperate.

The air scraped up the inside of his throat like a physical thing when the coughing fit started and then just _didn’t stop_.

“Whoa, hey!” Burnie’s feet came into his line of sight. His hands hovered in the air between them, like he wasn’t quite sure if he was allowed to touch. “You okay?”

The fit did not fade on its own, he had to force it down, force his lungs to work like they were goddamn supposed to. Once or twice, he couldn’t help it, but he managed to catch his breath and wave off Burnie’s concern with the hand that wasn’t scrubbing moisture out of his eyes. “Yeah,” he rasped, lifting his head to meet Burnie’s eyes. “Kinda stupid to run in this weather, is all.”

The worry lines in Burnie’s forehead smoothed out and he offered a tentative smile. “Oversleep?” At Michael’s nod, his smile became a little more real. “I thought you might have. My fault for asking you to come so early. Come on,” he jerked his head over his shoulder, “we should sit in my car with the heater while we talk.”

Oh thank God.

Despite the fact that it had been sitting empty for a while, assuming Burnie had been waiting for Michael outside, the car was still surprisingly warm. The itch in the back of Michael’s throat that kept trying to set him off again faded a little as soon as he got in and nearly disappeared once Burnie turned the car on and cranked up the heat.

“So,” Burnie said, shifting as much as was possible with the steering wheel in the way to face Michael. “You got any questions?”

Questions? Yes, so fucking many questions.

…

That he could not remember.

Michael opened his mouth, closed it, and turned away, adjusting his tattered backpack’s position in the floorboard of the car. “I… yes? But…” He huffed a sigh of frustration, scrubbing a hand through his hair and dislodging his beanie. “It’s just…” Hesitation kept fucking him over, but there was no way to say most of what he was thinking without being rude, which normally would not bother him at fucking all, but if Burnie didn’t deserve a little respect at that point, no one on the damn planet did.

“What?” Burnie prompted, not impatiently. If anything, it was encouraging, like he wanted Michael to just word vomit all over the interior of the rental car.

Which was kind of what he ended up doing.

“It makes no fucking sense,” the words pushed out of his chest like an exasperated exhale and just kept coming. “I don’t know what the fuck to _do_. I only hung out with the guys the once and now I have to decide whether or not to spend every day with them, like, shit man that’s gonna get old for them quick. Sure, I can play games, but I didn’t even graduate high school, I have no idea how the hell to do most normal person shit. _And_ ,” he continued, when Burnie started to open his mouth, “I fucking _hit Ryan_ and I don’t want to fucking hurt any of those dicks again.”

He had to slam his jaw shut and breathe tightly through his nose to keep from coughing again after _that_ little outburst. Clenching his fingers around the strap of his backpack, he kept his gaze fixed on the glove compartment, not quite sure what he was waiting for.

“I get that.”

Well. _That_ certainly hadn’t been on the list of things he’d been expecting.

Startled, he looked up at Burnie, and saw the man’s expression wasn’t annoyed, or pitying, or impatient. Just simple comprehension.

“I’d give you a guarantee if I could, buddy,” Burnie said with a wry quirk of his lips. “You’re right about all that stuff. Well- except the hurting them thing. I don’t think you’d do that unless they pulled something like Ryan did and you felt they were a threat. And in that case it’d be their fault, not yours, and no one would be mad. But the rest of it? I get that.”

“So…” Michael started, then trailed off, not sure where he’d been going with that sentence.

Burnie shook his head a little. “Like I said, I’m not going to make the choice for you, you have to do that. But if you want my advice?” At Michael’s instantaneous nod, he continued. “Give it a shot. It’s not like we’re locking anyone into a contract here. If you don’t like it, you can leave. If Geoff is possessed by a fucking stupid demon and decides to kick you out, nothing’s stopping him either. And in that case, I win because I can grab you for some other projects. I mean, does doing this keep you from doing something else here?”

That was- “Well, no-”

“Then it’ll be fine without you for a while. And if you want to come back later, I doubt it’s going anywhere.”

Silence reigned for a few seconds while Michael digested that.

Well, fuck. Everything sounded so simple when Burnie laid it out like that. Sure, maybe he’d crash and burn and that was still terrifying. But. The worst thing that would happen if he crashed and burned would be exactly what he’d be doing anyway if he didn’t at least _try_.

He took a deep breath, mind racing as it processed everything. Trying to buy enough time to _think,_ he asked the last, least important question he had… “What exactly _is_ the job?”

“Ehhh,” Burnie made a vague hand gesture. “You saw what the Achievement Hunters do most of the time, right? But there can be a lot of overlap in departments for one employee. Take Gavin, for example. He’s an Achievement Hunter, but he also does the Slow Mo Guys and he’s directed a season of Red vs Blue and he’s always got projects going on. So, mostly Achievement Hunter, but I can’t guarantee that none of the other departments will shanghai you if they’ve got a job they think you can do.”

After the last few days of binging Rooster Teeth content, Michael was very aware of the fact that the same people had a tendency to show up in all different kinds of places. And that Gavin, while generally completely incomprehensible, transformed into some kind of super genius the second he got his hands on a camera. Because he wasn’t already confusing enough.

“Pretty broad job description,” he muttered, suppressing a smile when Burnie laughed.

“Yeah, well,” Burnie lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Pretty weird company.”

Humming in agreement, Michael turned his gaze back toward the windshield and took a steading breath to force out, “Okay.”

There was a pause, just long enough that it was noticeable.

“Okay?” Burnie asked, something tentatively optimistic in his voice.

Michael nodded. “Okay.” He fell back into his seat, hitting the leather with a degree of finality. “I’m in.” When he risked a look over, he saw that eye-crinkling, huge grin was back.

“ _Awesome_.” Burnie slapped a hand down over the gearshift and pulled it into place with satisfaction. “I can’t wait to see the look on Geoff’s fucking face when you walk in, we _gotta_ make sure someone films that. You good to go today?”

“Sure.” A flash of panic lanced across Michael’s brain when he remembered. “Oh shit- wait!”

Snapping a look over, Burnie put the car back in park. “What is it?”

“Uh, I just-” Shit. He couldn’t explain this, it was incriminating as hell. “I gotta take care of something. Can you give me a sec? It won’t take more than a minute.”

“Sure thing.” Burnie was already pulling out his phone when Michael stepped out of the car, swinging his backpack onto his shoulder and shutting the door behind him.

If he wasn’t being taken for an idiot here, he was going to be on a plane in a few hours. He might not have ridden in a plane… ever (or at least not in memory), but he been in New Jersey on 9/11. He knew there were certain things that just weren’t allowed on planes.

There weren’t a lot of good places to hide things where they could be recovered later if they needed to be, especially if those things were weapons. He wasn’t happy about going anywhere unarmed, but he could always get more knives. And it didn’t matter where you were or who you were- you could always find someone, somewhere, who could get you an unregistered gun. So it wouldn’t’ be for all that long.

A dead end alley nearby had a stack of wooden pallets and a mountain of trash bags that had probably been there for the last few months piled against the far end. It was definitely a temporary solution, but if things went bad, it wouldn’t be long before he was back anyway, so it was with only a minor amount of reluctance that he left behind his gun (hiding the actual firearm in the pile and throwing the bullets down a storm drain because he was not going to just leave a loaded gun lying around- he could always get bullets later if he needed to) and his only remaining knife before returning to the car.

“That was quick,” Burnie said when Michael slid back into the passenger seat. At Michael’s silence, he shrugged, and put the car back in drive. “Good thing we’ve got a little time, though. Gotta make a stop before the airport.”

“What stop?” Michael asked, a little warily.

Raising an eyebrow, Burnie turned to him. “You got a photo ID?” After getting a bewildered headshake in response, he said. “Yeah, we’re going to get that for you. They won’t let you on the plane without one and I’m pretty sure they’re going to make us fight them for it.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALRIGHT! *slams hands down on desk* THREE THINGS  
> First- I got some of the nicest comments on the last chapter and I didn't respond because I am actual trash who cannot do words when experiencing too many positive emotions, so just know that if you commented at any point ever but ESPECIALLY on the last chapter, I love you bunches and am probably making you a friendship bracelet.  
> Second- I haven't been in the RT fandom all that long, so my knowledge of who worked where when and in what combinations is pieced together from fanfic and RT Life videos and is probably going to be super wrong in a lot of areas, this is my acknowledgement that I am mostly guessing all of that.  
> Third- This is another chapter I'm posting so I'll stop rewriting it because if I don't we'll NEVER move on (I can't help it, okay, reunion scenes are very important to me and I want them to be perfect, but there's no such thing and it's driving me INSANE). It's also long as dicks, so enjoy that!  
> <3 <3 <3

Getting a photo ID was such a nerve-wracking pain in the ass that it alone made Michael regret his decision to take the job offer.

He didn’t have any official documentation of his identity _at all_. The middle-aged woman behind the counter kept giving him suspicious looks while he kinda sorta hid behind Burnie, who was trying to explain the situation. She stank of the makeup that was painted all over her face and very clearly did not approve of him, his life choices, or his still-apparent shiner.

Her approval was not improved at all by the fact that they had to fingerprint him to get confirmation of who he was by comparing it to his fucking juvie record.

The lady who had suggested that had probably been double the age of the first. She’d been much more understanding and just calmly asked if he’d ever been fingerprinted and since that had been the only time-

Nausea had curled in his guts while he just _waited_ for Burnie to realize that he was hiring a criminal and make some sort of excuse and leave. But Burnie just laughed and asked how many times he’d been caught (just the once) and how often he’d _almost_ been caught (more times than he could count).

Burnie did not ask what he’d done, or why he’d been processed only to be given a warning. That was sort of a relief. Michael’s face was about to melt off from the heat of embarrassment as it was, he didn’t want to have to tell the story of the hardass, by-the-book rookie who’d taken him in for shoplifting and the tired-looking police chief who’d just looked at him with dead eyes and told them to cut him loose.

Several times, he’d wondered what the chief had seen when she’d looked at him. He’d been twelve years old and _furious_ , only a few weeks from the incident that would drive him out of foster care and onto the streets.

On the upside, the fact that they gave him his photo ID a couple hours later instead of calling over the bored-looking security guards at the entrance to give him some new metal jewelry led him to believe that he’d finally caught a break. If there wasn’t a warrant or whatever on his file, then either that law that put a time-limit on how long after a crime was committed you could arrest people for it was on his side, the investigation hadn’t gotten too far, or there just hadn’t been an investigation at all.

Whichever way, he was glad to tuck his new card into his wallet and follow Burnie out the door, though he still wasn’t quite brave enough to make eye contact with the guards.

His photo ID was shiny and new and cool as shit, if you ignored the obvious black eye.

The airport they arrived at later, however, could go fuck itself.

It was loud. It was so goddamn loud Michael wanted to tear his beanie in half and stuff each piece into one of his ears. Announcements overlaid on top of noise from various shops and restaurants (why the fuck were there _restaurants_ in an airport? Gift shops sort of made sense, last minute souvenirs, but _restaurants, really_?) all on top of the sounds of people yelling angrily, happily, the dull roar of conversation, children screaming-

Chaotic was the word. The sounds were so loud and random and _constant_ that he wasn’t sure which way to look, his brain felt like it was fritzing, trying to go in way too many directions at once-

Honestly, it was a goddamn goldmine. The crowds of people pressed too close, the noise, the way jostling was just expected- it was so _hard_ to keep his fingers from dipping into rich-looking pockets (there weren’t a whole lot of those in Jersey and Michael had always absolutely _refused_ to start lifting wallets from people that would have to skip meals because of it). The last thing he needed was airport security on his ass because he didn’t want to let an opportunity pass.

But goddamn it, it would just be so _easy_. And the fact that it was so hard to resist was a little scary. If he couldn’t be a normal person _walking through an airport_ , how in the hell was he going to manage to be a normal person with a _job_?

Not to mention that without the distraction of picking pockets, the dense press of people was almost enough to send him back outside.

The only thing that made it bearable was that Burnie was really fucking tall (why were they _all_ so goddamn _tall_ ), so all Michael really had to do was stick close and let him blaze the trail until they were through the worst of the crowd. It didn’t necessarily help with the sound problem all that much, but it did help Michael quit reaching for a knife that wasn’t there every time someone brushed against him.

Going through security was horrifying. Even though he knew he’d gotten rid of his weapons, knew his ID was legit, he was in a cold sweat the whole time, convinced that they’d know, somehow, that he wasn’t supposed to be around normal people, couldn’t be trusted on a plane.

But no. They made him empty his pockets and take off his shoes (why) and walk through the metal detector and that was that.

Burnie made light, mostly one-sided conversation the whole time, didn’t comment on how Michael’s hands were shaking almost too much to retie the laces on his shoes, and vanished for a few minutes after leading Michael to their gate (why were they called gates, there were no gates, what the fuck was with airports), and came back with two coffees.

Michael picked one of the two identical cups at Burnie’s prompting and folded his fingers around the almost-too-hot paper. The heat was fantastic on his hands, dry and cracked as they were, and the bitterness of the coffee helped him settle a little, though he was still jittery verging on panicked.

They only had a few minutes to kill before their noon flight (getting the photo ID had taken _far_ longer than it should have, as far as he was concerned) and they spent it in a comfortable silence. Michael had plenty to ~~freak out~~ think about and Burnie was absorbed in his phone, though his brows were drawn tight and he was scrolling slowly, like he was reading something important, not browsing Twitter or playing a game.

As far as Michael was concerned, the fact that they didn’t have to wait long for their flight was amazing. They’d been in the airport for about fifteen minutes, not counting security, and he already wanted to crawl out of his skin and into a dark hole with less _noise_ and _people_. The less time between them arriving and getting on the plane, the better.

That opinion lasted for as long as it took them to _actually_ get on the plane.

Burnie had some frequent flyer something or other that meant they got to board in the first group, so Michael followed along and he wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but a long, winding hall that ended in a huge opening that the plane had pulled up to was not it.

Planes looked bigger from every angle except the inside. The inside was tiny. The inside was cramped. It was not the dark, comforting hiding place Michael had been craving, it was a death trap that he was going to be crammed in with dozens of people.

He bit down on the urge to freak the fuck out. That was crazy. This was fine. People did it every day. Just because he never had didn’t mean it was this huge deal. Panicking was ridiculous. He needed to get over himself.

Burnie, bless his fucking soul, had made a beeline right for a row that had slightly more leg room than the others and what looked like a hatch built into the side of the plane. “Want the window seat or the aisle?”

“Window.” The word was out his mouth before he even totally thought the question through. Window meant he’d get his back to an exit and Burnie between him and everyone else on the damn plane. But if that was the emergency exit, then Burnie needed to be closer to it-

“Cool,” Burnie reached overhead and slid the tiny duffel he’d been carrying onto a shelf above the seats. “You want me to put your backpack up here or are you going to hang onto it?”

Michael’s fingers reflexively tightened on the strap of his backpack. “I’ve got it.” And then he had to slide into the row and it may have made the most sense, but he didn’t like not being able to get out without someone else moving for him.

The seat between him and Burnie was empty and he was worried that someone might want to sit there, wasn’t sure how he’d handle a stranger that close to him for the whole flight (how long was the flight, anyway?), but everyone just walked past. Some people had obviously wanted one of the seats with more leg room and shot them a cold stare, but they walked on without saying anything.

Burnie had pulled something out of his pocket and was fiddling with it. When he saw Michael trying to get a look, he held it out. “Gum?”

… was he trying to say something?

Seeing his look, Burnie narrowed his eyes, then his expression cleared all at once. “Oh, this is your first time flying, isn’t it?”

Starting to bristle, Michael forced back the reaction, even though his face still heated. It was just a question. “Yeah.”

Burnie sat up a little. “Okay, good, I’m glad you told me before we took off, now I can warn you.”

 _That_ didn’t sound good.

“There’s less pressure the higher up you get, right? You can’t really tell a difference, but your ears start feeling clogged and gross, like you’ve got a bad head cold, so you have to pop them. Gum helps with that.”

Yeah, that did not sound like a good time. “What do the hell you mean ‘pop’?”

Burnie opened his mouth, closed it, then pulled out his phone. “Hang on, I’m going to google an explanation before I have to put this in airplane mode.”

There was a flight attendant at the front of the plane going over safety measures in the event of a crash. Michael deeply did not want to be in a vehicle where they explained that sort of thing before every departure, but it was a little late to regret all his life choices, which was a fucking shame because he was doing it anyway.

But then Burnie was leaning over the empty seat, holding out his phone and summarizing an article of some kind that explained how and why ears popped. It was enough of a distraction that Michael didn’t actually remember what was about to happen until the plane started moving.

Now, part of Michael, the tiny, starved part he kept locked in a dark corner, was still a kid and was thrilled at the idea of actually fucking _flying_. The rest of him was losing its shit because it was nerve-wracking enough to just _sit_ in the plane, but then it started moving, going so fast it was _shaking_ , and then-

They were in the air and the ground outside the window fell away and away and away and Michael slammed back into his chair before the vertigo could make him any dizzier.

And yeah, it was already starting to feel like something in his ears was going to try and explode out the sides of his skull, so he wordlessly held out a hand and pretended not to see Burnie’s smirk before a couple sticks of gum were slapped into his palm.

 

* * *

 

Michael did not remember falling asleep, so he was pretty surprised to wake up with his head half crammed into a pillow and an armrest digging into his thigh.

A few long seconds passed as he tried to figure out why he couldn’t see out of his left eye and why his pillow was rumbling. Also… pillow?

All his blood had been replaced with sand, if how difficult it was to move was any indication. It took way more effort than it should have to shift his position, gravity was in the wrong place, and- where had the pillow come from?

After he blinked dumbly at the slightly-smooshed cushion that had fallen into his lap when he moved, low laughter made him slide his eyes over to Burnie.

“Don’t look at me like that, dude, you just fucking passed out. The only thing I did was make sure you didn’t wake up with a crick in your neck.”

He’d been so asleep that Burnie had managed to shove a pillow under his head without him noticing? That was… concerning. But maybe he should just be glad he’d spat out his gum after his ears popped (which was the _worst_ , he was never flying again) and hadn’t choked to death on it while he was out

Grinding out the sleep in his eyes with the heel of his hand, Michael blinked rapidly, trying to force himself farther into consciousness. “Are we landing? Already?”

“Yeah, you slept a good few hours. We’re on approach.” Burnie straightened in his seat as well, slipping his phone back into his pocket. “Plus, we don’t have any checked bags to pick up and I’ve got my car in one of the lots, so we should be good to head out as soon as we land.”

Right. Head out. To Rooster Teeth. To see the guys.

It was _possible_ that the sudden lightheaded feeling was from the fact that they were heading for the ground _really_ fucking fast, but Michael didn’t think it was particularly _likely_.

Flexing his fingers against the ends of the armrests, he focused on shutting his eyes and pressing back into his seat, because there was no way the flying death machine was going to touch back down completely smoothly. He’d believe a lot, after the last week, but that was pushing it.

As it turned out, he got to be right about something for once. The impact wasn’t _horrible_ , but it still made him dig his fingernails into the plastic of the armrests. If his jaw hadn’t been clenched so tightly he was felt a headache coming on, he’d probably have bitten his tongue.

Fuck planes.

But then they were slowing down and stopping and people were getting up and pouring into the aisles, pulling bags down and forming such a dense press of people that Michael was briefly overwhelmed with dread before he noticed that Burnie was waiting. He didn’t try to slip into the line to leave the plane, just watched until almost everyone was off and they had the breathing room to move.

Michael’s body had apparently attempted to become one with the uncomfortable plane seat while he slept, it was that hard to pull away.

Ugh, he _hated_ the sleep-stupid feeling. It didn’t happen often, but a deep sleep fucked him over so hard when it came to remembering how to function. Even worse, _moving_ was a chore and his reaction time went straight to shit.

Yawning as he stood made his chapped lips pull and split in at least one place and his torso was all stiff and sore again and seriously, fuck everything about planes and sleeping heavily.

He wondered if Burnie were somehow telepathically aware of all that, considering the amused look he received as he stepped out into the aisle, trying not to trip over his own feet or get his backpack snagged on any of the armrests.

The Austin airport was still loud, still crowded, but there was _way_ more room for people to spread out. It was around four in the afternoon on a Friday, so it made sense that a lot of people would be travelling, but Michael had _breathing room_ , and that was all that mattered.

It was a surprise to look out the massive windows and see the wide expanse of green airway fields under a sky so blue it might be from a cartoon, though. Definitely not the mental image of Texas he’d had in mind, but he wasn’t complaining.

Burnie led them through the airport with a degree of familiarity that Michael was pretty sure most people only had in their own homes. He may not have had to use the taller man as a trailblazer anymore, but he still stuck close by. Easier to resist picking pockets when people were farther away and you had an image to keep up in front of the man who’d paid your air fare.

Not that he was looking for more names to add to his list of ‘people I owe way too fucking much to’. And with Burnie it was less… pressing? Less intense. It wasn’t that he’d done less, it was that he seemed to do it without thinking at all, like it was a given. The help the other guys had given him, that was deliberate, conscious action. Burnie just sort of _did it_. It made Michael slightly less stressed than the rest of the list, that was for sure

The exit led right out towards the parking areas, where Burnie’s car was, and holy shit, Michael had actually gotten on a plane and flown halfway across the country and why was that only sinking in _now_ -

His second mental breakdown in a week was abruptly ended when he followed Burnie out the doors and stopped dead.

Burnie walked several yards ahead without noticing Michael had stopped, but turned fairly quickly to give him a concerned look. To be fair, Michael had _no_ idea what the expression on his face was at the moment.

“Michael? Everything alright?”

Instead of answering, Michael took a few more steps forward, feeling the Texas air curl around him like a living thing.

Just a few steps, just to be sure, then he looked up at Burnie and probably sounded like an idiot, but all he could say was, “It’s _warm_.”

Surprise flickered in Burnie’s eyes for a moment before recognition moved in instead. “Oh, right. Yeah, pretty big jump from Jersey weather, huh?”

“Are you kidding me?” Setting his backpack down on a nearby bench, Michael swept his beanie off his head, tucked it into his back pocket, and stripped off his jacket to stuff into his already-mostly-full backpack.

He didn’t like the way Burnie’s gaze zeroed in on his bandaged arm at _all_ , but it was worth it to step out from the shaded area outside the doors and into the sunlight.

Looking directly at him would probably cause blindness, but the heat sweeping over his pale skin sank in and was driving out the cold that had been clinging to him since fall. He’d grabbed moments of warmth, sure, but the cold was always lingering, lurking outside, ready to move back into his bones.

But Texas _was_ warm. It was warm and bright and goosebumps spread over every fucking inch of his skin as he just _thawed_.

“I _really_ hope you remember how excited you were for things to be warm when we hit July,” Burnie said, but he was grinning as he led the way towards the parking garage.

“Fuck, bring it on, I’m game.” Every single hair on his body was lifting away from his skin, like it was hungry for as much light as possible. “How warm _is_ it?”

“Ahh…” Burnie pulled out his omnipresent phone and checked. “Seventy-six degrees.”

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ.”

Tapping the screen a few more times, Burnie lifted an eyebrow and smirked. “And it is thirty-four degrees in New Jersey.”

“Of course it fucking is, it’s fucking _February_.” Stepping into the parking garage stole the sunlight away, which sucked, but the warmth lingered, which was still a huge improvement from five hours ago.

But being in a parking garage, climbing the slope towards the next level, just made him remember the _last_ time he’d been in a parking garage. With Gavin. Who had been _so_ upset by Michael’s insinuation. Shit.

Headlights flashed and two electronic beeps sounded when Burnie clicked his keys, sending them towards a small car. Not bothering with the trunk, Burnie just slung his duffel into the back seat.

“I was just going to head straight to the office, if you’re cool with that. We should be able to catch them before they leave for the day, if we hurry.”

Aw, fucking shit.

“Sounds good,” Michael replied, sliding into the passenger seat of the (very warm) car and settling his backpack at his feet in the floorboard.

Burnie must have picked up on the slightly strangled tone of voice he had going, because after he started the car and cranked up the air conditioning (for which Michael would someday forgive him), he reached out and gave Michael’s shoulder a nudge. “Hey, seatbelt.” He waited until Michael had reluctantly fastened his seatbelt before he continued. “Don’t worry about it, they’ll be so fucking excited when you show up.”

Michael didn’t scoff, but it was a near thing.

Yeah, he was there and maybe they’d be glad for it eventually, but he wasn’t expecting anyone to leap for joy, _especially_ not before he made some really fucking serious apologies for the last time he’d seen them.

It was possible he hadn’t really visualized seeing the guys again when he’d decided to take Burnie’s offer. That was a mistake.

He tried not to freak out as Burnie drove, mostly in silence with music playing just quietly enough that the lyrics couldn’t be made out, but it still provided background noise. It was _way_ too late for second thoughts or cold feet. If they weren’t okay with him being there, he’d leave. It was as simple as that.

But god, he _really_ hoped they were okay with it.

The drive lasted an eternity, but somehow ended way before it should have when Burnie pulled through a gate and into a parking lot outside a building Michael had seen in the one or two RT Life videos he’d watched and holy fucking god, he was going to pass out.

The car was parked. When did Burnie park the car? How long had Burnie been patiently staring at him, waiting for him to get out of the car that was _off_?

“You need a minute?” Burnie’s voice wasn’t condescending or anything, but it was veering towards almost _too_ understanding. Not pitying, not patronizing, but still embarrassing.

Clicking the release for his seatbelt with relief, he steeled himself, opened his door, and swung his feet out onto the pavement. He almost ripped the rubber sole completely off his right show in the doing, but he was on his feet and closing the door and following Burnie towards the building and stepping inside and cool air swept over the exposed skin of his arms and-

Fuck, fuck, fuck, he should have bolted the second he got out of the car, scaled the fucking gate if he had to, there was no way this was going to go well, no way he wasn’t kidding himself, no way this wasn’t going to crash and fucking  _burn_.

It was incredible the lengths your damn mind would go to rationalize anything you desperately wanted, then have all that disappear into the fucking ether the second it was confronted with reality.

At least there was no one in the small entrance. It was a nice little area, bright with the light from the glass door, lined with Red vs Blue posters, and totally abandoned. The door to the left was open, but if he was quick enough he could probably-

A head popped out the open door, probably to check who’d just come in. It was a shorter guy with light, shaggy hair and a friendly face whose grin held an edge of relief when he saw Burnie.

“Hey! Wow, that was a fast trip.” His eyes flickered toward Michael and he looked confused, but didn’t say anything.

“It was more of a pickup,” Burnie said, and there was a lightness to his tone as he stepped further into the building, like mischief. Great. “Kerry,” Oh, that was why his voice sounded familiar. Burnie turned back to Michael, waving a hand in a theatrically humble sort of gesture, “meet Michael Jones, AKA Rage Quit.”

For second, there was dead silence, then Kerry’s jaw dropped for just an instant before morphing into a huge grin. “Seriously?”

“ _What_?” came from further in the room and Kerry was pushed aside. The person who’d conducted a hostile takeover of the doorway narrowed her eyes at Michael, long red hair swinging behind her when she tilted her head.

“Uh…” Shit. What did you say to people who already knew who you were? Who had _expectations_? “Hey?” Brilliant, fucking nailed it, Jones.

She stalked forward and the urge to bolt out the door increased exponentially with every step she took. Truth be told, he’d probably have given into it if he’d thought he could get away with turning his back on her.

Stopping in front of him, she settled her hands on her hips and stared him down. He held her gaze, getting the feeling that she was looking for something and that saying anything while she was doing her little inspection would not be held in his favor.

After a few more seconds, her lips quirked in a small, satisfied smile and she held out a hand. “Lindsay Tuggey. If you can get those guys to stop being bitches, we’d owe you one. They’ve been pissy ever since they got back from New York.”

“Pissy is not the word I would use.” Kerry offered as Michael warily shook Lindsay’s hand, but then he paused and reconsidered. “Well. _Ray_ is pissy, as much as he’s anything. Gavin’s sulking. I don’t even _know_ what the other three are thinking.”

“They’re not really that confusing,” Burnie said, but he was smirking.

“Maybe not to _you_ , dude, but I’m not getting in the middle of that. I choose life.”

“Do _I_ get an option to choose fucking life?” Michael interjected before he could think about it. “Or am I just getting fed to the sharks here?”

Lindsay gave him a sardonic look. “Rules are, the newbie is first in line to be the virgin sacrifice.”

“Oh, well, fuck you too, bitch.” _Greeaaat_ , way to alienate your new coworkers(?!?!?!?!), asshole.

But Lindsay’s little smile became a full blown grin and she slugged him lightly in the arm (the left one, thank every shred of good luck in his miserable fucking life) before saying, “You’ll do.” Whatever _that_ meant. It sounded vaguely complimentary though, so sure, what the fuck.

“If it’s cool with you,” Burnie started, drawing Michael’s attention again, “Lindsay’ll be the one filming it when the guys find out you’re here.”

Michael shrugged, “Sure.” He wasn’t an expert by any means, he’d have had to camp out in the library for the majority of a year to get through all the Rooster Teeth content, but he’d seen enough to know they filmed fucking _everything_. If it wasn’t something they thought was good, they just wouldn’t post it.

Besides, there was no one out there he was worried would find the videos. No one that he’d be embarrassed to have see them. The only real person he knew outside this building was Maggie and she wouldn’t give a shit beyond laughing her ass off and she’d laugh at him whether he was on the internet or back in Jersey, so it didn’t matter either way.

Burnie frowned, though. “Anyone in a video gets to see it, and if someone’s not okay with it, it won’t get posted, so you’ll get a chance to veto it, if you want.”

Uhhh… “Okay?”

That didn’t seem to satisfy Burnie either, what the fuck?

Kerry came to his rescue, though, clearing his throat and saying, “Yeah, might want to hold off on filming Ray. He’s in there,” he nodded to the door across the small room and Michael’s heart rate tripled, “everyone else is out pretending to be busy in the warehouse.”

“Nice as it is they’re Ryan’s problem for a while,” Lindsay crossed her arms, “it’s going to be everyone’s problem if it goes on much longer.”

Brows drawing tight, Burnie frowned harder. “It get worse since yesterday?”

“He pretty much kicked them out of the office with the power of his glare, you tell me.”

What the fuck were they talking about? Were the guys fighting or something, why? They’d seemed good, at the convention-

“Right, not filming Ray, then.” Burnie clapped his hands together and pointed both index fingers at Michael. “Ready to see your new office?”

“Uh, if Ray’s pissed is it really the time?” Yes, he wanted to see Ray, and yes, he also wanted to run for the fucking hills at the idea of seeing Ray, but topping all that was the fact that he didn’t want Ray to be upset, or _more_ upset, because he was an inconsiderate asshole.

The grin Burnie gave him was pure innocence and altruism, so he was definitely missing something. “Don’t worry about it, I’ve got a feeling this’ll cheer him up.”

Again with Burnie’s ‘feelings’. Whatever, Michael was faced with two choices, one being arguing further and making it abundantly fucking clear to Burnie and probably Kerry and Lindsay too that he dearly wanted to do anything but tempt Fate, that bitch, again. Or, he could pull his shit together and actually go open the door.

It was the expectant stares that got him in the end. Burnie already knew he was pretty fucked up, he didn’t want to spread it around by acting like a skittish coward in front of Kerry and Lindsay too.

And then his hand was on the doorknob and his entire being wanted to freeze, but he forced his fingers to clamp down and his wrist to twist before the paralysis could set into his arm and-

And there it was. The office that he’d seen in so many of the videos he’d watched over the past few days. It was smaller than it had looked, though he _was_ seeing it from a new angle. But it was weirdly… comfortable, like the videos he’d seen on the other side of the country had somehow already put him in the room with the guys, so he was used to it, wasn’t horribly out of fucking place there.

It felt like he was walking into a familiar place after a long trip away, and he hadn’t thought he even remembered what that _felt_ like.

The office was, true to Kerry and Lindsay’s words, empty. The desks pressed against either wall, the couch by the door, were all bare of inhabitants. Except the far right desk, directly across from the door Michael’d just opened but hadn’t brought himself to walk through yet.

Ray was staring at the screen in front of him with laser focus that would not have seemed out of place in a brain surgeon’s operating room. His fingers were clutching a controller like a lifeline, or a stress ball, large headphones covered his ears, and there was tension in every line of his body.

Whatever he was playing must have been really fucking intense, because he didn’t catch sight of the door opening out of the corner of his eye. If anything, his focus got more narrow, more centered. If he was in the middle of something, Michael really ought to jus-

An arm reached over his shoulder to rap knuckles against the door he kinda sorta might not have let go of yet.

“Hey, Ray!” Burnie said, and the usual friendliness of his voice has just the slightest strain to it now, like he was worried for the first time about saying the wrong thing. “Got someone here to see you.”

Just like that, the ramrod posture weakened. It wasn’t really a _slump_ , so much as it was resignation and fatigue and, shit, they really should have picked a better time.

Ray dropped his controller into his lap, lifted his hands to push his headphones back around his neck, looking up and over towards the door, and froze.

Ten or fifteen seconds passed (or maybe minutes, or maybe just an instant, time was acting weird) where Ray’s expression was blank, uncomprehending, hadn’t quite processed what he was seeing.

Michael offered a weak smile and a little wave, like maybe that would stave off- something. Make this less fucking awkward.

Then Ray’s controller clattered to the ground, his left hand slapped onto his desk as he levered himself halfway out of his chair, like he was about to… what? He paused in place, headphones cord pulled taut, eyes wide in surprise, mouth slightly open, but nothing good or bad either way really showing on his face.

Burnie commandeered the doorknob from Michael’s petrified fingers, stepped out of the room, and shut the door behind him. He was either giving them privacy (why) or pre-emptively trying to block out screams of rage (why _god_?).

Ray stared at him for a few more seconds, then started groping around on his desk, eyes never once moving away, until his fingers brushed against his phone, which he snatched up. He had to briefly look away, then, to pull up _something_ , but he kept flicking his gaze back up, like he wanted to make sure Michael was still there.

From across the _room_ , the sound of the line starting to ring was audible, even after Ray pressed it against his ear, waiting.

Michael had no idea what to _do_ , he was just sort of _standing_ there, backpack over one shoulder, trying to figure out if he should be doing something or _stop_ doing something-

“Yeah, hi,” Ray’s eyes finally slid away when the line picked up. “I uh, I need to cancel a ticket… Today... I know, that’s fine… Flight number? Uhh…” He flipped his mousepad over and snatched up a post-it that had been stuck to the underside, squinting at it before rattling off a string of digits “I think that’s right… Yup, the seven-fifteen to Jersey, that’s it… Ray Narvaez Jr… Yeah, same card… Great, thanks.”

Hanging up, he dropped the phone onto his desk with a clatter and sank back into his chair. Then he scrubbed a hand over his short hair, making it stick up in ways previously unknown to science, and quietly laughed that same, breathless, surprised laugh he had the first time they’d met.

When he looked up at Michael again, his eyes were clear and bright and there was an incredulous smile on his face. “ _Shit_. Cut it a little closer, dude. Almost missed your chance for a dramatic entrance.”

And every single tense, stray-animal-scared muscle in Michael’s body just went _limp_.

Fucking hell. Ray had been planning to come back and see him, Burnie had just beaten him to it.

The smile he mustered was a little unsure on his face, but it stayed as he walked forward. The middle desk on the right wall was empty. There were little patches of dust broken by sharp lines, like something had been there until recently, but it was bare, so Michael figured it was okay to set his backpack down.

“Well, I mean, if you want, I can head back to the airport, make sure to run into you right before you get through security.”

“Fuck no,” Ray watched him cautiously settle into the chair in front of the empty desk and his smile settled into something a little more solid. “We don’t need to get any more romcom up in here.” But he held out his hand and clasped Michael’s forearm, careful of the bandage, and Michael was relieved that he could return the grip without hesitating or freaking the fuck out.

The tight knot of nervous energy in Michael’s chest dissipated into warmth. God, how could he have doubted _Ray_? Ray fucking got him, wasn’t scared to reach out to him, even when he _had_ to know what Michael’d done to Ryan.

At least he hadn’t yelled at _Ray_. Of all the shit he’d done, at least he hadn’t done _that_.

“Sorry,” he said reluctantly, not wanting to ruin the comfortable feeling in the room, “for…” He made a vague, impotent gesture, like that could possible convey everything he was thinking, everything he needed to apologize for.

“Dude, don’t even.” Ray’s gaze was intent. “Some random guys I barely know offer me a job playing video games without proving they're legit? I’m running the fuck away too.”

It wasn’t just _that_ , _running_ barely scratched the surface. But, by Ray’s expression, he knew that. Knew what Michael was and wasn’t saying, and was totally willing to write the whole thing off without so much as talking about it.

Michael sort of wanted to acknowledge that, but he had a feeling that wouldn’t end well for either of them, so instead he just asked, “So how the fuck did you end up _here_?”

Ray looked into the middle distance and sighed like a war widow. “Sometimes bad things happen to good people, Michael.” He grinned when Michael snorted and shrugged. “I’d been on the website forever, I’ve always been involved in shit. There’s not all that strict a line between fan and employee, once you get someone’s attention here. I already knew who they were and what they did, I just had to be talking into moving from New York.”

“That was all?”

“Well, the guys also have to talk me out of murdering Gavin, but that’s more of a bi-weekly thing.”

Right. The other guys.

Grimacing, Michael scratched at the back of his neck. “They, uh… they pissed?”

Ray’s eyebrows went _way_ up. “At _you_? Hell no. At themselves? Little bit.”

That couldn’t be right. “I was an ass to them.”

“And they were dumbshits. _Seriously_ , dude, don’t worry about it. You’re _here_ now, it’s _fine_.” Ray paused, glancing away for an instant before looking back at Michael. “You _are_ going to take the job, right?”

Wasn’t that the million dollar question? “If everyone’s alright with-”

He jumped when the door behind him creaked, nearly spinning his chair away before he could settle back down in it to turn properly.

“Uh, Ray, do you know why Lindsay’s film-”

Geoff froze, halfway through the doorway, when he spotted the other person in the room. When he realized who that person _was_ , his eyes went wide and his hand tightened on the doorknob and Michael’s heart thudded painfully in his chest.

This was it, this was the moment of truth. Ray was okay with him, but Ray hadn’t _been there_ , hadn’t gotten yelled at, hadn’t seen his boyfriend get punched in the face. If there was anyone short of Ryan who’d be totally in their rights to kick him right the fuck back out of the building, it was Geoff.

Geoff, who mutely let go of the doorknob, took a few steps forward, started to reach out, then abruptly stopped dead, let his hand fall, and dropped onto the arm of the couch. For a second he just stared, then scrubbed a hand down his face, letting out an almost inaudible, “ _Fuck._ ”

Was that bad? That was bad, that was probably bad, this was a terrible idea, Michael clutched tightly at his backpack’s strap, ready to scoop it up, ready to go-

Ray stood, shot a questioning look at him (he shrugged in response, figured that covered all the bases), and walked over to Geoff in silence. He stood between the two of them, blocking Michael’s view of Geoff’s expression when the man looked up, but he did see Ray reach out, lay a hand on his shoulder, and squeeze. Geoff’s hand reached up to cover it for a second and return the grip before Ray slipped past, towards the door.

“Don’t scare him off again,” Ray’s voice was half joke, half command. He paused in the doorway and gave Michael a stern look then tilted his head toward Geoff, and twitched his fingers toward himself, like maybe Michael was supposed to come find him after he talked to Geoff?

Whatever it was, Ray closed the door behind him and Michael was left in the room alone with his… future boss? If he didn’t get kicked out in the next ten seconds?

Honestly, he had no idea what was going on in Geoff’s head. The man was _so fucking hard_ to read and that _sucked_. Michael was _good_ at reading people, it was a skill you developed really quickly under the right circumstances.

But outwardly, Geoff was just giving him a blank stare. There was something… soft? Distressed? About his eyes and forehead, but Michael couldn’t tell what, couldn’t even be sure he was reading _that_ little bit right.

Normally, Michael didn’t give a good goddamn about long silences, but he was seriously starting to get worried about Geoff’s completely lack of… _everything_.

“Uh…” Oh wait, this was a good chance. If Geoff was just going to sit there in stunned surprise, Michael had time to talk before getting kicked out.

“I looked you up,” he started, hoping that didn’t sound weird. “A couple of days… after. So I know- I know I was wrong and I’m sorry for-” for what? For thinking the worst of them? For throwing Geoff’s offer back in his face? For flipping out on Ryan? “-for everything,” he finished lamely. “I just. Gavin was upset, when I said… I just want to make sure he knew- that all of you, really, knew that I didn’t… think you were lying anymore. And I’m sorry.”

Geoff took a long breath and was it a little shaky or was Michael just projecting?

“We’re sorry too,” he said and. What? “We fucked up. We’re- it’s fucking stupid, but we’re used to people knowing us, didn’t realize we’d have to explain. Didn’t realize it sounded sketchy as dicks to just throw that out there.”

Michael opened his mouth to, well, he wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like they’d done anything _wrong_ , it was an honest mistake, _he_ was the one who straight-up lost his shit at them. But. Everyone else didn’t seem to think so, he was outnumbered on that front. And Geoff looked _miserable_ , trying to ignore what had happened wouldn't fix that.

A few seconds passed where neither of them did anything. Michael wrestled with whether or not he needed to say he accepted the apology for a few seconds before the moment passed and he couldn’t say anything at all for fear of it sounding awkward.

“Burnie’s last minute trip,” Geoff said slowly. “He went looking for you?”

“Yeah.” Michael’s lips twitched up involuntarily as he remembered. “Someone recognized me from the video and tweeted about it, so he knew where to look. He said-”

He snapped his jaw shut so hard he almost bit off the tip of his own tongue. Couldn’t say that, that was putting Geoff on the spot, that was inviting himself in, he shouldn’t-

“Burnie said what?” Geoff asked, low and dangerous, and okay, Michael should probably tell the truth for the sake of Burnie’s prolonged survival.

“He- he said the offer was still open.” Picking at a loose thread on his jeans, Michael studiously avoided looking up. “I thought- I mean, I just wanted to apologize, so you don’t-”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Geoff’s whole body snap forward.

“You’re interested?” his voice was a little disbelieving, but not in a _bad_ way.

Looking up, Michael forced himself to make and hold eye contact. Because this was fucking important.

“ _You’d_ be my boss?” he asked, because he had to make sure. Because he didn’t know Geoff that well, but he knew the man had apologized to him twice so far. Said he was _wrong_. People didn’t _do_ that, not the bad ones. Not the entitled, self-absorbed, inconsiderate bastards who made everyone around them miserable at best, but seemed to have all the power anyway.

Geoff had patched him up and ignored his silent meltdowns and offered him a job. He let Gavin climb all over him without so much as blinking, didn’t get mad, admitted when he was wrong. That was… unbelievably good to know. Geoff wasn’t going to fly off the handle without a moment’s notice or take it out on his employees when he had a bad day. He’d tried to help, and even if that had blown up in both their faces, there’d been nothing malicious at all in his actions.

Michael wasn’t sure he’d be okay with working under anyone _but_ Geoff.

“’course,” Geoff replied, instantaneously. “Any other fucker in this company wants you, they’re going to have to pry you out of our cold, dead hands.”

That sent an entirely unexpected rush of heat to Michael’s stomach that he gamely ignored. “And… everyone else is okay with it?” Because it was a group and they were all _together_ , he didn’t want to cause problems-

“Every single one of them has come up to me to talk about taking some time off so they could go back and look for you.” Geoff paused. “Except Ray, but I’m pretty sure that was because he was planning on leaving without telling us.”

With great effort, Michael managed to keep his face blank. Well, that wasn’t really true. He managed to avoid accidentally revealing anything about Ray, but he couldn’t keep his face totally blank confronted with- well. Whatever the fuck the Achievement Hunters were on.

He took a deep breath, let it out, looked at Geoff. “Then… yeah. Yeah, I’m interested.”

A smile slowly spread across Geoff’s face and his eyes narrowed a little in something like satisfaction. “Great. You’re hired. Hope you like that desk.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends, have a chapter! Next one might be a little late, moving house over the next few days, so writing's gonna slow down a bit. Hopefully not too much, but just wanted to warn you guys in case!
> 
> This is another 'post so you stop rewriting it' chapter and I've been up nearly the whole night, so I'm going to bed now, but I hope it meets your expectations!

Michael felt sort of lightheaded, but not in a good way. More of an ‘oxygen deprivation’ way.

It was possible he was hyperventilating. Or just not breathing deeply enough.

That was fine, though, as long as he could hide it.

He tried to laugh a little and gave himself a mental round of applause when it didn’t sounded strangled. “That was easy.”

Geoff shrugged a little uncomfortably. “You see the video I posted on Twitter?”

“Of me and Gav? Yeah?”

Okay, _that_ look, that dissatisfied look, was nearly identical to the one Burnie’d given him earlier, what the shit.

Visibly twitching the thought out of his head, Geoff continued. “I think it’s safe to call that your audition, or resume, or whatever. People have been demanding little shits, they want to see more of you.”

 _Fuck_.

“I-” don’t know what they want, don’t know what _you_ want, am not funny, definitely can’t be funny on _command_ , don’t understand why you think I can _do this_ -

God, what was _wrong_ with him? This was what he’d wanted. It was all working out better than he ever could have hoped. Ray’d been glad to see him, Geoff didn’t hate him. It was all fine.

So why did he feel like he was trying to breathe underwater?

Geoff gave him a look that was such a tangle of impressions that Michael couldn’t parse it, but it was definitely warm. “We’re not going to have you jump in at the deep end, dude. We’ll figure it out.”

‘We’ll figure it out’, figure _what_ out, what were they expecting him to _do_?

Levering himself up onto his feet, Geoff smiled reassuringly. “Want to go meet up with the others? They’ll feel better once they see you.”

Feel better why? Burnie had said something like that too. Were they just upset something had been left unresolved or what?

For the record, he really, really did _not_ want to go see them, he wanted to sit in that desk chair for maybe an hour and just _let_ himself hyperventilate and freak out. But. He _did_ owe these guys. It was probably a good idea to rip off the band-aid anyway. If one of them had a problem with him, better to know as soon as possible, right?

Please, _please_ let them not hate him.

He followed Geoff’s lead and stood, torso twinging in pain at the movement, but only a little. Automatically, he hiked his backpack up onto one shoulder, but stopped to reconsider. Geoff had said that was his desk now, so probably it would be fine to leave his bag there. It wasn’t like he was going all that far, right?

Setting the backpack down and leaving it made him feel practically naked as he followed Geoff out the door. He wasn’t sure _why_ , but he wanted to go back and grab his backpack or put his jacket back on. It was ridiculous, so he pressed forward, trying to ignore it.

Lindsay and Ray were nowhere to be see when they walked back out of the room, but Burnie was perched in a chair by the door, phone in hand, as per usual. He looked up and grinned at them.

“Make up, kids?”

“You’re a son of a bitch,” Geoff fired back, but he was smiling too. He was trying to hide it and his moustache did an honorable job of helping with that, but he wasn’t _quite_ successful.

“Yup,” Burnie pushed himself to his feet. “I do my best.” He nodded down the short hall opposite the entrance, where various low voices were coming from. “Everyone else is in the break room. Ray hasn’t said anything, but they know something’s up.”

Geoff gave Burnie an indecipherable look. “You got Lindsay in there?”

“Yeah, and it’s making them even more suspicious.”

Blowing out a long breath, Geoff scratched at the back of his head, then glanced at Michael. “You ready?”

Michael just shrugged. Because no, no he wasn’t. He wanted nothing more than to run for the goddamn hills. But he was pretty sure Geoff would tackle him if he tried, apology or no apology.

Rip off the band-aid, rip off the band-aid…

That hallway was very short. Way too short, what was the point of even having a hallway if it was going to be that goddamn short?

It ended at a set of stairs, Geoff turned to the left and kept going, but Michael paused in the entrance, just to get his bearings.

The room was high-ceilinged and huge, the stairs leading up to a second floor that was open to the whole area. A sort of kitchen area sat to the left with a long table surrounded by chairs and-

It wasn’t hyperventilation. He just kept forgetting to _breathe_.

Ray was sitting at the table, a secret little smirk on his lips as he played something on his 3DS. Apparently there was something significant about that, because the others were just fucking _looking_ at him. He was where Lindsay’s camera was trained, right in the middle of the group.

Gavin was to Ray’s right, unabashedly staring and opening his mouth every two seconds like he was going to say something, then shutting it like he wasn’t sure what. The bruise on his jaw was almost completely gone and there was no gauze under his collar that Michael could see immediately, so that was good.

 _Ryan_ , on the other hand…

Michael’s stomach bottomed out.

The bruise on Ryan’s jaw wasn’t _horrible_ , but it crawled up into his cheek and was dark enough that it was hard to look anywhere else. On some level, it wasn’t as bad as Michael’d thought it might be, he’d thrown that punch _very_ hard. But seeing it at all, the fact that he’d done that, almost on purpose, made him feel a little sick. Or a lot sick. It was maybe a good thing he hadn’t had all that much to eat that day.

Ryan was on Ray’s other side, staring down at him, eyes narrowed, like he was trying to figure out what was the secret behind that smirk without making it obvious that he was curious. He was holding himself kind of strangely, like he was hesitant to get too close, which made no goddamn sense.

And Geoff was walking towards them, walking up to the only one facing directly away from the entrance and laying a hand on his back. The gesture was a greeting and more than that, something soft about it, something that made Jack turn to look at him in pleasant surprise.

Then Geoff nodded over his shoulder and Jack turned and went dead fucking still.

He didn’t say anything, not yet anyway, just _stared_. But the stillness was enough to get everyone else’s attention and they looked up and it wasn’t like they’d been talking before, but Michael was pretty sure the sudden all-encompassing silence was a pretty big factor in the deafening roar of his heartbeat in his ears.

Probably he should look away from Jack. But he was scared to see Gavin, who’d been so fucking upset the last time they’d seen each other. And he wasn’t sure he could _ever_ bring himself to look Ryan in the eyes again, and even if he did, he had no idea what he’d see.

Not that looking at Jack was all that much better, considering how _their_ last interaction had gone (and, oh, _there_ was the crippling embarrassment he’d put aside a week ago, how fucking punctual), but it was the best of the evils.

But Jack’s face was doing something weird and fuck, why couldn’t he read that expression? Why did Jack and Geoff both look at him like-

“ _Michael!_ ”

A loud _crack_ slammed into his ears and his brain and for a second all he could see was trash-strewn alleys and all he could smell was gunpowder and smoke and there was something _flying_ at him-

“Gav, don’t-!”

It was Geoff’s shout that made Michael instinctively clamp down, tense every muscle in his body to try and lock it into place, to _force_ himself not to move when the blur crashed into him at speed.

Fucking _stars_ bloomed across his eyes at the impact, when a thin, but very motivated body slammed into him and, by extension, the bruises that made up almost half his available skin. He clenched his jaw and kept any noise from escaping his throat, but even that couldn’t help the fact that half the air got knocked out of his lungs.

He’d have fallen backwards from the hit if nothing else, but long, lanky arms locked around his shoulders and weren’t squeezing _too_ hard, but were definitely not going anywhere any time soon. Such skinny arms shouldn’t have _encompassed_ him so much.

A hot breath of air across his collarbone drove a contrary shiver up his spine.

“You came,” Gavin murmured from where he’d tucked his face into the space where Michael shoulder met his neck. “You actually bloody _came_.”

That was probably the quietest he’d ever heard Gavin fucking speak, and that was including when the Brit had been _whispering_. He sounded like it was a good thing, though, and he was squeezing pretty tight (which hurt, but Michael was going to be the last one to stop him) and didn’t seem like he was letting go any time soon, so it was probably okay.

Over Gavin’s shoulder, Michael could see the others. Ray looked entertained and Burnie was working his way there from concern. Lindsay was snickering silently as she pointed the camera.

Geoff, Jack, and Ryan, though, looked absolutely fucking _horrified_.

It made sense, they were scared he’d freak out on Gavin after what’d happened to Ryan. That sort of stung, that they thought he’d hurt Gavin, but he was also kind of grateful for it because, well… they weren’t exactly wrong, were they? It was good they were so wary, when _he_ didn’t even know what was going to set him off. Clearly, Gavin needed someone around him who would analyze the threats to his safety (that he _never_ fucking seemed aware of) for him.

But he hadn’t flipped his shit on Gavin. The jackrabbit-pounding of his heart wasn’t from the _hug_ , it was from the stool that had toppled sideways and crashed into the floor when Gavin launched himself across the room at the speed of sound. Which was fucking stupid because those sounds weren’t all _that_ similar, really, right? He needed to fucking pull it together, to _breathe_.

Maybe the breathing could wait, though. Until Gavin loosened his death grip and the muscles in Michael’s chest stopped seizing in pain.

But the others were watching. They were watching and Lindsay was filming and he was _not_ going to let this be his introduction to the company, not something tense or weird.

He’d snapped his arms up automatically when he’d seen something headed his way. When he’d nearly been knocked on his ass, he’d grabbed double fistfuls of the fabric of Gavin’s shirt, just behind his shoulders. Forcing the fingers of one hand to unclench, he thumped Gavin on the shoulder, not hard enough to be any degree of painful, but enough to be heard.

“ _Christ_ , dude,” he forced a smile onto his face and humor into his words and, by the time Gavin pulled back to look at him, both felt a little more real, “it’s only been a _week_.”

Gavin blinked at him a few times, then a huge grin stretched over his face and his arms looped right back around Michael’s neck, in less of a desperate hug and more of a clinging dead weight that left Michael staggering.

“But Mi- _coooooooool_ ,” he whined and, okay, he _had_ to be doing that on purpose. “You just disappeared, Michael! Didn’t think we’d ever see you again!”

“That’s still a possibility,” Ray said, drumming his fingers on the table by his DS, chin propped in his other hand, “if you keep strangling him like that.”

Gavin pouted audibly, but did let up, pulling back and running his eyes up and down Michael, as though he was trying to make sure he wasn’t being tricked. One of his hands stayed wrapped around Michael’s wrist, but it wasn’t a desperate grip like back in the parking garage. Mostly, Gavin didn’t even seem to notice, was just holding on because he felt like it.

All of Michael’s senses were being overridden by it, the heat of Gavin’s hand, the lazy, casual touch that sent static electricity running across his nerves.

Getting it together took more effort than it should have, but he _had_ to pay attention. Their reactions, the honest ones, were fucking important. Whether or not he could stay depended on them.

Jack was clearly relieved that Michael hadn’t immediately dropkicked Gavin, was leaning back against the table and just watching. His face cycled through all kinds of expressions before finally settling on a bemused sort of fondness towards his boyfriend. So that was alright, even though that same expression from before was still there, lurking underneath.

Geoff’s face was also kind of relieved, but it was counterbalanced by quickly-hidden murderous rage. It was always so weird how angry people got at each other over not being careful. Such a weird tangle of thought and emotion that Gavin probably incited in about eighty percent of the people who didn’t despise him after five minutes of his company.

Working up the courage to look at Ryan wasn’t easy, considering Michael still kind of wanted to crawl into a cave at the bottom of a canyon whenever he thought about the last time they’d seen each other. But he had to at least look him in the eye once, to apologize, he deserved that, even if he hated Michael.

Ryan… didn’t look mad. He was watching them, of course, but his face was more… considering, maybe? Protective, towards Gavin. For a brief second, he met Michael’s eyes, then glanced away, seeming uncomfortable, and Michael’s heart twisted in his chest.

Christ. He’d always known Ryan was going to be the smart one, the one who’d see through his bullshit, but being right didn’t feel _good_ , it felt like vines spreading through his chest and up his throat to choke the life out of him. Like a rush of heat and blood and _panic_ -

Swallowing hard, he forced it back, down, as far as he could. Later. He could freak out _later_ , by himself, when he could do it quietly. For the moment, though, he needed to figure out something else.

Ryan deserved an apology and Michael really needed to make one, but he couldn’t do it in _front_ of everyone, couldn’t make things awkward and weird, not now, not when he’d only just gotten the mood in the room a little lighter.

Maybe he’d be able to get Ryan alone, at some point? … In a way that sounded less fucking creepy?

“Michael,” Geoff announced to the others in an arch tone that did a surprisingly good job of covering his hastily hidden reaction to Gavin’s self-destructive idiocy, “is taking the empty desk between Ray and Gavin.”

Silence reigned for a beat, then a jumble of high-pitched, enthusiastic noises spilled out of Gavin’s mouth and Michael found himself being half-strangled for the third time in as many minutes.

“Hey!” There was a man at the top of the stairs, scowling down at them. Wasn’t that Gus? “Shut the fuck up, assholes, people are trying to work here!”

“Yeah, tell them we’re sorry next time you see them,” Geoff shouted back.

“Funny, dickhead.” Gus redirected his gaze towards Gavin, who was still doing his best to become Michael’s living cape, and squinted down at them. “That the Michael kid?”

“Yes!” Gavin shouted, directly into Michael’s ear, the dick, fucking ow. “And we’ve got dibs, you can’t have him!”

Gus just shook his head. “Good fucking luck, kid. At least now the drama bullshit can stop.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” Lindsay raised her camera to capture Gus too, “it’s a small office and that house still isn’t big enough for half a dozen drama queens.”

Wh-

“Excuse you,” Ray twisted on his stool to look at Lindsay, “we have plenty of room. Right?” The last was directed towards Jack and Geoff.

“Of course,” Jack said quickly. He glanced over and that expression from before was still lingering in his eyes, but the smile Michael was given was real, if small. “The guest room has an attached bathroom and everything, you’ll like it.”

If Gavin couldn’t feel the pulse pounding away in his neck so quickly it felt like a vibration, Michael would be really fucking surprised.

He didn’t- he hadn’t-

Oh god.

Of all the things. Of all the goddamn, ridiculous facets of the decision to come to Texas that he’d gone over, where he was going to stay had _never_ factored in.

But they couldn’t- Ryan still wouldn’t look at him, Jack seemed sort of off-balance too. Geoff, Gavin, and Ray were alright, but he couldn’t force his presence on people who were uncomfortable having him around, especially in their _own home, what the fuck_.

He hadn’t realized that they would- but of _course_ they would, where else did they think he was going to _go_? Where had _he_ thought he’d go?

If he’d known that he’d be that much of a problem, he wouldn’t have even considered getting on that plane. Or, well. Not seriously, anyway.

The job was enough, the job was more than enough, he couldn’t ask this, he needed to think, to come up with some way out-

“If you want it, of course.”

Ryan’s voice cut through his chaotic thoughts like a razorblade through mist. He was… the look on his face was… there was a word for it. Serious, but not in a harsh way… solemn, maybe?

And he was looking reproachfully at _Gavin_ , still not acknowledging Michael, not really.

“You don’t have to stay with us if you don’t want to.”

Michael’s heart flinched, but that was good. Ryan didn’t want him there, was giving him an out and hoping he’d take it. It was _good_ , to know ahead of time, it was easier to plan, he wouldn’t get- dependent, or complacent, he was going to have to find his own way like he always did and that was fi-

“Of course he does!” Gavin pulled back, running his hands down Michael’s arms as he did, again not seeming to notice when Michael’s hair started lifting away from his skin, chills rolling down his spine. “Right, Michael? You’ll come stay with us, right? Lindsay’s just having a laugh, we’ve got loads of room, there’s two spares, the one Jack was talking about is just nicer, but you can pick, if you want. Come on, it’ll be top!”

Oh shit. Oh _shit_ , he couldn’t- there wasn’t anything-

He could say no, but then they’d want to know where he _was_ staying and Gavin would be upset and-

But Ryan, if Ryan wasn’t okay with it Michael was _not_ going to fucking force himself into their space-

And they were all _looking_ at him and he couldn’t make this decision instantly, he couldn’t _think_ , couldn’t come up with what to say before they’d notice he was hesitating and-

“If you’re cool with it, that’ll probably be easiest for everyone,” Burnie said, and his words, his stance, were casual, but his eyes were intent, like he’d noticed Michael hadn’t quite gotten a full breath in the last five minutes. “It’ll take us a while to jump through all the hoops to get the legal documentation you need for us to actually hire you. And you should probably get familiar with all the equipment you’ll be using, they’ve got it at their place too.”

Okay, Ryan wasn’t glaring at _Burnie_ , he was sort of nodding to himself in agreement and that didn’t make _sense_ , but it did make it easier for Michael to shrug.

“Sure, sounds good.”

It did not sound good.

It did not sound good at _all_ , he was agreeing because he didn’t have the _option_ to do anything else. Everyone was basically been telling him to do it and he didn’t have a way out, they’d want to know where he’d be if he weren’t with them, he couldn’t _lie_ , he didn’t know Austin at all, they wouldn’t believe a word that came out of his mouth. And they’d think it was his pride that was making him not want to accept help and they’d be all insisting and careful, not wanting to offend and drive him away, but that wasn’t _it_.

He’d yelled at them and hurt them and said horrible, horrible things and let them spend so _much_ on him and he now he was going to take part of their _home_ , part of the place they were supposed to feel _safest_ and that-

That might be the worst thing he’d ever do.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, guys, sorry this took so long to get up and is a little shorter. I'm moving atm, so I don't have a lot of free time, and if I didn't cut the chapter off here, it would have been another 5K before I hit a good place to stop and then I wouldn't have anything saved up, so I'd probably have to miss updating next week and nobody wants that.
> 
> Also- I keep getting the sweetest fucking messages from you people, my heart can't take the kindness. That's not to say stop, by all means continue! I'm glad you're enjoying the story as much as I'm enjoying writing it!! <3 <3 <3

Gavin was either very, very oblivious or very, very shrewd and Michael had no way of telling which.

Whichever it was, he was grateful. Gavin was a convenient, _loud_ buffer between Michael and Jack and Ryan. Michael didn’t have to deal with any awkward or serious conversation when Gavin was in earshot, so he stuck as close to the Brit as possible while the guys were getting ready to leave work.

Ray was great to be around too, but he was quieter and seemed to just want to watch everything, whereas Gavin was an active, if unknowing, distraction, so, yeah, Gavin.

“How have you not caught the fucking plague?” he asked listlessly, leaning back in his (???) desk chair and watching Gavin try to find something in the biohazard area that was his desk. Everyone else was still in the break area and Michael was positive they were talking about him and how to deal with him, which would normally piss him off but… he figured springing all this on them was enough of a dick move that they deserved a chance to gather their thoughts. Maybe come to their senses about him.

He honestly wasn’t sure if he was hoping for that or not.

“Naahhh…” Gavin drawled, shifting some stuff around and knocking at least half a dozen things to the ground behind the door. He looked at the assorted fallen bits, shrugged, and kept rummaging. “If I start getting sick, I just skip it.”

“What the fuck- that’s not how getting sick works!”

“Well, have you ever _tried_ it?”

Michael opened his mouth. Closed it. Narrowed his eyes at Gavin’s shit eating grin. “I fucking hate you.”

Gavin just looked smug at that, which was an expression that Michael desperately wanted to wipe off his face in the most efficient way possible, and returned to searching for what could either be a wadded up tissue or the holy grail, going from the variety of things on his desk.

The door swung open and Michael tensed, but only Jack stuck his head in.

“Hey,” he said, and his eyes were tired, but his smile was real, “Ray, Ryan, and I are going to head back to the house. You two good to go with Geoff to get food?”

“Uh, sure,” Michael slowly stood, careful not to let any of his discomfort show on his face when his entire torso loudly screamed profanities at him, and slung his backpack onto his shoulders.

Triumphantly, Gavin pulled a flash drive from the inside of a broken figurine, stuffed it in his pocket, and said, “Sure. Got to make sure he gets something good.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “I’ll leave that one up to you. Try not to take an hour to decide this time.”

“Aww, Jack, it’s all in good fun.”

“Yes, but I want to _eat_ at some point tonight, not officiate whatever inane bet you two put together.”

“That’s okay!” Gavin declared, chipper about it. “Michael can officiate!”

“Michael is not getting in the middle of whatever fucked up decision making contest you two are talking about.” Michael managed to maintain his flat look in the face of the truly epic pout directed his way, but it was a close thing.

Jack’s smile grew a little at that. “We’re going to go ahead and go, but Geoff might be another minute or two. He and Burnie are talking about something in Burnie’s office, but they shouldn’t be too long.”

“Right, don’t let Ray kill Ryan,” Gavin offered conversationally, taking the half-step necessary to reach the door and reaching out.

“Yeah,” Jack replied wryly, “I’ll do my best.”

They met halfway for a brief kiss that was more habit than anything, but Michael still jerked his gaze away so fast the muscles in his eyes strained.

He’d known they were all together, but, aside from brief touches that seemed to linger, have a little more emotion behind them, he hadn’t really seen them act like it. Maybe it made a certain amount of sense, in a place they were more comfortable, around people they trusted, they could be a little more open than they felt comfortable with in a place they barely knew, around people who were definitely going to judge and talk about it.

It made sense, but it didn’t mean heat stopped crawling up his neck and into his face.

“Should have an easier time of it now,” Gavin was continuing, not noticing Michael’s weirdness at all. “Seems he’s in a better mood already.”

That… Michael struggled for a second with whether or not he should say anything, but it was _Ray_ , so… “Is everything okay? Ray seemed really stressed when I got here.”

“It’s fine now,” Jack said quickly. When Michael managed to force himself to meet the man’s eyes, they were honest, if a bit… harried. “Everyone should be back to normal by tomorrow.”

Well what the fuck did _that_ mean?

“See you at the house.” Jack gave a little wave and quickly left, not entirely shutting the door as he went and making Michael more than a little suspicious. What was going on there?

“Oi,” a sharp poke to his shoulder jerked Michael out of his thoughts to glare at Gavin, “have you got anywhere you want to go?”

Michael was genuinely surprised Gavin had asked and immediately felt bad for it. He shouldn’t be making assumptions about these guys so quickly, especially not when it had fucked him over so bad before. At least it was an easy question to deflect. “I don’t know what’s around here, I’ll leave it to you guys. I’m really not picky.”

“Top!” Gavin grinned, pulling open the door and heading out into the entry area.

Not like he’d seen a lot of people earlier, but the more complete silence of the building made Michael think that most everyone had gone home already. The sky outside was growing dimmer, it was almost six already.

“How cold does it get here at night?” he asked before he could think about it.

Gavin shrugged, though, “Not very. Bit chilly, nothing compared to England.”

Snorting, Michael set his bag down on one of the chairs by the door so he could pull his jacket free, just in case. “I bet.” He’d grown up on the east coast, which was bad enough without the near-constant rain that England apparently boasted.

“Hey.” Geoff sauntered up, hands in his pockets. He seemed pretty relaxed in general, which was awesome. There was a little bit of something in the way he held himself, but it was barely there, probably nothing. “Ready to go?”

“Yup,” Gavin replied, popping the word at the end and following Geoff as he headed for the door. “Geoff, what are you thinking, Geoff?”

Pushing the door open, Geoff looked over his shoulder at Michael and raised an eyebrow. “You like barbecue?”

“… sure?” What ‘barbecue’ meant completely depended on the person who was saying it, going from past experience. Some people he'd met just used it as a term for grilling outside. But Michael had gotten over being picky very, very quickly, so he was good with any of them. A little nervous, seeing the delighted gleam in Gavin’s eyes, but good.

“Rudy’s?” Gavin asked, skipping ahead a little as they made their way through the parking lot toward a relatively small SUV.

Geoff clicked his keys and headed for the driver’s door when the lights flashed. “That’s what I’m thinking. Good?”

“Brilliant.” Gavin swung into shotgun with no hesitation.

Michael was perfectly happy to crawl into the back. The distance was nice and no one could hound him about his fucking seatbelt. He parked himself behind Geoff’s chair and slung his backpack into the middle seat so he could start pulling on his jacket. The air wasn’t cool yet, but he could definitely feel it changing as they lost sunlight.

The drive was quick, or at least felt like it. Silence was a foreign concept to Gav, who kept spewing words without pausing for breath, unless he was pulling short contributions to the conversation from Geoff and Michael. No time for serious talk, no time for awkward silence. The timing of it, the consistency, it was so elaborately precise that Gavin either constantly lived his life on fast forward, had no filter, or was doing it on purpose.

Geoff casual responses made Michael think it was probably the first two. Now if he could only decide if that was weird or impressive.

The restaurant they pulled up to was packed. Well, Friday night at nearly six, of course it was. But Geoff managed to find a spot to park after a few laps of the lot, though he didn’t turn off the car when they finally came to a stop.

“I called ahead,” he explained, taking off his seatbelt, “I’ll run in right quick, it’ll be hard enough for one person to get through that shitfest.”

Relieved, Michael sat back in his seat. Crowds made you vulnerable, but were also fucking goldmines. It would suck to be surrounded like that and not even be able to take the edge off by lifting the wallet off the asshole that wouldn’t stop stepping on your toes.

Gavin turned in his seat. “Would you rather… taste with your fingers or not be able to taste at all?”

Geoff rolled with those sorts of questions, Michael had seen it happen twice during the drive. He himself, though, had a little trouble getting through his default reaction.

“What the _fuck_?”

“Because, like, not tasting would suck, everything would be _texture_ , and that’s gross.” Gavin paused, visibly generated a mental image to go along with that thought, and gagged.

“You know what else would be fucking gross?” Words were just falling out of Michael’s mouth, but he rested assured in the fact that nothing he said could top Gavin’s mental gymnastic leaps. “Having to taste everything you touched. Good luck jerking off, dude.”

“You could wear _gloves_ , Michael.”

“I don’t see how hand sweat and old leather is much better, _Gavin_.”

Gavin grimaced. “What about those gloves- dentists have them, don’t they? Flavored ones?”

A blank stare wasn’t a great answer, but the mental image was just so fucking stupid. “So the options are don’t taste anything or spend all your time tasting shitty artificial flavoring.”

“Well not _all_ the time, you could take them off and stick your hands in a cheesecake or something.”

“ _Why the fuck_ would you want to stick your hands in a fucking cheesecake just to taste- no, fuck it, that’s too much trouble, not tasting at all is better.”

“Come on, it wouldn’t be _that_ bad!” Gavin protested. “Like- okay, we’re getting barbecue, you eat that with your hands and it’s awesome, it’d be even better if you didn’t have to chew and swallow, you could just stick your hands in it and taste it for however long you wanted, it wouldn’t go away.”

Squinting, Michael studied him. “Was that whole thing just a roundabout way of telling me how awesome the food is here?”

“No! Well,” he paused, seemed to think about it, “Not on _purpose_ at least, it’s like when you see something and forget about it then remember it later but you’re not really remembering it because you already forgot it but- what?”

“Did you just confuse _yourself_?” It was like back at the convention, when he’d been laughing even when he’d been so goddamn pissed, because this guy was _batshit_. “You’re a fucking moron!”

“It’s makes _sense_ , Michael!” Gavin complained as Geoff opened the back door opposite Michael to lift in some surprisingly large bags. Then again, there _were_ six people to feed.

Geoff took in the fact that Michael was laughing (which was terrible, _everything_ hurt, but he couldn’t help it), that Gavin looked _smug_ for some reason, and raised an eyebrow, his moustache quirking in amusement. “Do I want to know?”

“ _I_ don’t even want to fucking know, dude.”

Air was moving easier through his lungs now. Each breath felt like it actually did something, almost like it had back in Jersey, before he’d shoved his foot down his fucking throat and made things weird.

Hanging around these guys was easy, if he didn’t fuck it up. He could do this. Maybe.

He just had to not fuck it up.

Tall order.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has not been proofread because I've had the worst week ever and there was no time, but I do like it and I hope you do as well! Enjoy!

The guys’ house was… _nice_.

It wasn’t super fancy, or anything, but it was still _nice_. Single-story, but big for it, in one of those neighborhoods that had been there for, like, three days and half the houses hadn’t been moved into yet.

New. _Neat_.

Two weeks ago, Michael had been squatting in an abandoned apartment complex that had half its floors caved it. He could not _possibly_ fit less.

Only the fact that Geoff pulled all the way into the garage made him okay with getting out of the car when he sort of felt like he should stay in it until it gained enough sentience to realize he didn’t fucking belong and take him back to Jersey.

… Some of Gavin’s batshit might be rubbing off on him.

But he was just going to fuck up the niceness, the garage was _clean_ , even the personal little touches like the two bicycles and the freezer looked out of place against it. What was he supposed to _do_ , how could he keep from tracking the fucking alleys of Jersey into the house with him, how was he going to _do_ this?

“Come on, Michael,” Geoff called from the door Gavin had already disappeared through. “Before the food gets cold.”

Michael went.

The house fucking smelled like wood still, like sawdust and paint and _new_.

He carefully toed off his battered sneakers just outside the door and left them in the garage. Not that his socks were super clean, but they were the newer ones, the one’s Jack had given him, so they were much better than the alternative.

It was the _least_ he could do. He _had_ to minimize him impact here, couldn’t repay them by messing up their normal. Well, their relative normal, anyway.

He couldn’t be something they’d regret.

The lights in the hall were dim, casting an orange glow on wooden floors and cream colored walls that were _covered_ in framed posters in what had to be the most eclectic combinations of movies and games he’d ever seen. A small laundry room was off to one side, but the hall was narrow and disappeared around a corner before he spotted more than a closed door.

Voices drifted through the hall, rising and falling in a hesitant sort of pattern.

Swallowing hard, he walked down the hall and peered around the corner.

The room was huge. It was massive and sort of seemed to be three rooms smashed together? It was mostly a big living room with one of those huge couches shaped like an L, a couple of cushy-looking arm chairs, and a television that Michael was pretty sure was big enough to see a message from space, if necessary.

A bar sort of made a divider between that area and a kitchen, but there was no wall or anything, just the bar, then open air above it. There was a long table with chairs off to the side of that, by a long row of high windows and a sliding door, probably out to a backyard, not that he could see with it so dark outside.

But the bar was where the guys were, unpacking the food in such a practiced way Michael wondered how often they ate there.

For a second, he just watched them. Jack had a roll of paper towels in hand, but was distractedly listening as Gavin went on at length about god-knew-what. Geoff and Ryan were unpacking the actual food, but had their heads together, speaking in low voices, and that did not fucking bode well at all.

And Ray-

“Hey, bro,” Ray called from another hall, almost directly across from the one Michael stood in. “C’mere, let me show you your room.”

Michael’s heart did _not_ flip over sideways when Ray said that. It wasn’t _his_ room, not really. They were just… letting him stay there until he could afford his own place. He was just a guest, it was a _guest_ room, it didn’t belong to him just like this house and these people didn’t belong to him. He didn’t have a right to any of it.

Ray was standing in the first doorway on the right. He gestured down the hall, “Our room is down there if you need anything, but this one’s yours.”

Carpet cushioned his feet when he stepped into the room and had to take a few careful breaths to keep from reacting.

Before, Michael had shared a room with one of his brothers. They hadn’t been poor, but they were hovering at the lower end of middle class, so their house had been older, kind of run down, didn’t have enough bedrooms for all of them.

Everything about the house he stood in was new, from the shiny wood floors to the high ceilings in the living room. A new house probably wasn’t a stretch at all for _five_ incomes. It was all so… picture perfect, like it hadn’t been broken in yet, they hadn’t lived there long enough for it to really be a _home._

The room he stood in, though, the furniture looked _real_. It was in good shape, but it had clearly been used, brought from wherever the person it belonged to had lived before. A bed, made up with mismatched pillows and a heavy-looking comforter was pushed into one corner, there was a desk against the wall, under a window, next to an overstuffed armchair that looked absurdly out of place and probably just lived there because there’d been nowhere else to put it. Two dressers, one with a TV on it, and two doors. One was open and Michael could see tile, so the other was probably a closet.

“All the furniture’s empty, so you can put your stuff wherever,” Ray was saying, and how long had he been talking? “Oh hey, speaking of, I was actually about to start some laundry, but I don’t have enough for a full load, you need anything washed?”

Everything in his backpack and everything on his fucking body.

“Couple of things,” he offered distantly. He had to force his feet to move, to carry him into the room, it wasn’t going to hurt him, he was going to _try_ not to hurt it, but at least it wasn’t brand new, at least a scruff or a scratch wouldn’t destroy it.

Keeping his clothes in his backpack was not the greatest idea in the world, not when they were dirty. The smell kind of multiplied, sometimes.

He really didn’t want to hand the bundle of cloth over, was opening his mouth to ask where to take it, when Ray snatched it out of his hands.

“Great, I’ll go toss this in there. Feel free to poke around, but don’t let the food get cold on you.”

Michael’s mouth watered at the thought of food, of the smell that had filled the car the whole way to the house, but he tried to reign himself back. Maybe he hadn’t eaten since that morning, demolishing the rest of the night before’s sandwich while he waiting to see if he was going to get arrested or not because he doubted they’d let him hold on to perishables if he was, but he wasn’t going to act crazy about it, it’d just make them act weirder.

“Cool I’ll be out in a sec.”

And then Ray was gone and Michael was left alone in the room.

Part of him wanted to crawl into the closet, shut the door, and hide there until things started to make sense again, but he couldn’t, couldn’t give them reasons to treat him differently, or at least any more differently than they already were.

Checking out the bathroom was reasonable, though, right? Yeah.

It wasn’t huge, but it was pretty big, considering. There was a huge, really _nice_ looking shower in the corner that he really, really wanted to take advantage of. Maybe after dinner? No, some of the guys probably showered at night, it could wait, he’d figure out a time.

He didn’t want to go out into the kitchen. The guys were _all_ there, he’d never really been around them all as a group before, not all at _once_ , and the relationship thing just made it all more complicated. Apparently something was going on between Ray and the rest of them? How was he supposed to avoid stepping on nerves if he didn’t know where they were?

“Michael?”

Pulse skyrocketing, because that voice could belong to one of two people, neither of which he really wanted to be alone with at the moment, Michael took a quick breath before poking his head out the door.

His heart turned into an anvil and crashed into his stomach when he saw Ryan.

Ryan looked shifty, but not in a suspicious way. More like he was… nervous, maybe? Which, fair enough, Michael wouldn’t be comfortable facing the guy who’d fucking cold-clocked him either. That didn’t mean he didn’t feel his stomach cramp with guilt.

Swallowing hard, he managed, “Yeah?” Was pretending nothing was wrong a good idea? They needed to talk, yes, but Michael had no doubt that Gavin would come charging into the middle of any conversation he wanted to be a part of if it suited him. And he would almost definitely come looking if Michael didn’t turn up in the kitchen soon.

They just _couldn’t_ talk yet, not like they needed to. And no, that wasn’t Michael making excuses.

Ryan held out a bundle of cloth. “I noticed Ray made off with most of your stuff. You’re probably not getting any of it back tonight, but you can use these, if you want.”

Michael had to force his feet forward, because it didn’t look like Ryan was going to set a single toe inside the room itself, preferring to just hover in the hall instead. “It’s fine, I can just-” but no, the clothes he was wearing were pretty dirty, he wouldn’t want to fuck up the bedding or anything-

Raising an eyebrow, but saying nothing, Ryan silently held out the bundle again and Michael reached forward, hesitated, then carefully took it. It was just a T-shirt, soft and nearly threadbare, obviously an old favorite, and a pair of sweat pants, but it felt heavy in Michael’s hands.

Something seemed to ease in Ryan, then, just the slightest tension going out of his shoulders. Good. Maybe Michael wasn’t a giant fuck up in this, at least. “There’s also a bunch of blankets in the top shelf of your closet,” Ryan indicated the door Michael hadn’t opened yet, “if you get cold tonight.”

Nodding, not sure what else to do, Michael turned to set the clothes on the bed and settle his backpack by the footboard.

Should he say something, he probably should, right? At least acknowledge that he wasn’t trying to blow off what had happened, wasn’t trying to avoid taking responsibility for what he did. But was there anything he could say that wouldn’t start something, something that would take long enough that someone would want to come find them?

“Come on out whenever you’re ready,” Ryan’s voice was soft, almost coaxing, but not condescending in and of itself.

And then he was gone and Michael was left wondering… well, a lot of things.

Ryan was treating him way better than he had any right to expect, but he _really_ wished he knew what was going on in the man’s head. Did he feel obligated? Was he okay with the decision his boyfriends had made? He couldn’t be _scared_ of Michael, he was too big for that, but he did sort of seem… wary, maybe?

Which was good. It was good to be wary, especially of Michael, especially since he hurt people without meaning to, sometimes.

He needed to find a way to talk to Ryan. But first, he had to get through the evening.

An actual sit-down dinner would almost definitely have pushed the awkward to unbearable levels, so Michael was glad to walk out and find that most everyone was standing around the bar while they ate, though Ray was perched on the bar itself with a plate in his lap and Ryan was sitting on a stool nearby, watching him.

The food _was_ good, and it was so weird to have had so much good food two days in a row. He ate more than he should have, but no one could expect him to talk if his mouth was full, Geoff had ordered enough food to feed a fucking army _anyway_ , and it was easier to avoid eye contact if he was focusing on something else.

Good meat had not been easy to come by, in Jersey. The best you’d get would be the stuff from fast food places that was off the cheap menu and probably mostly pocket lint anyway. This stuff was different- the taste, of course, but also the texture, it wasn’t cut-up bits mashed together again, it was just… whole. Normal.

Normal was weird. Michael wasn’t totally sure what he could do with it.

But he’d eaten as much as he possibly could (plus a little more) and he hadn’t slept last night and it had been a really long day and his whole body, especially his ribs, _ached_. He was trying to figure out if he needed to say something or if he could just leave when Jack noticed what was up.

“Don’t mind us if you want to go get some sleep,” he said. “We’ll keep it down, don’t worry.”

Michael snorted lightly, the last thing he’d have to worry about sleeping through was a bit of distant conversation. But he slipped down from the stool he’d been gingerly perched on, grateful for the excuse. “Yeah.” Yesterday he’d been passed out in a library because he didn’t have anywhere else warm he could sleep. Today, he’d been given a room, a bed, all to himself. It was jarring in a way he wasn’t sure he liked.

Yeah, it was all great, but it felt so surreal that he couldn’t believe he could feel the cool hardwood underneath his feet, the near-constant ache of his torso. Like he was already asleep and waking up was inevitable.

“Good night, Michael!” Gavin said cheerfully, as Michael attempted to move away without obviously hobbling.

Good night. When was the last time he’d said that to someone? When was the last time someone had said that to _him_?

He gave a little wave over his shoulder, so no one would be able to see his face. “Night.”

Maybe everything would feel more real in the morning.

 

* * *

 

Or maybe it would have, if he’d been able to actually fucking _rest_.

It was the same problem as the hotel bed. Every time he shifted and the mattress dipped under his weight, he flailed upright, convinced he was falling.

Stupid. Fucking pathetic, jumpy _bitch_. He’d slept in beds most of his life, technically speaking, just not all that recently. Well, aside from when he’d basically passed out at the hotel with the guys, but he’d have passed out standing up with his knees locked at that point, the mattress had nothing to do with it.

This was _easy_. This was just _sleep_ , why was it so weird? Why did it have to be so _difficult_?

A normal person. He _needed_ to be a normal person here. But… but he couldn’t _sleep_.

Fed up, he threw the (soft, wonderful) covers back and sat up, scrubbing his hands against his face. He was exhausted down to his _bones_ , sore and tired and kind of nauseous and wanting nothing more than the blissful peace of unconsciousness, and that was _without_ adding the mental strain of trying to figure out how to cope with all these assholes.

God. What was he supposed to _do_ , he couldn’t even last the _night_. He was literally incapable of doing nothing.

The carpet was thick and cushioned his feet when he got up and started pacing, crossing his arms and rubbing them furiously (though careful of the massive bruise on the right one), even though he wasn’t _really_ cold. Yeah, it was kinda chilly, it was probably hard to keep a house cold during the day, then expect it to be warm at night, but it wasn’t _that_ bad. Certainly not as bad as the streets of fucking New Jersey in the dead of winter.

He just. He needed to chill. Needed to not feel like a rat in a cage, like a jumpy conspiracy theorist, like a fucking _crazy_ person who couldn’t handle fucking _comfort_ , who was getting more and more antsy because the pale, empty walls were blank and too uniform and felt like they were falling away into a void and pressing in to choke the life out of him, both at the same time.

Breath catching in his chest, he shook the thought out of his head.

No. He was… he didn’t want to say _safe_ , nowhere was really _safe_. But he wasn’t in active danger. It was _fine_.

But it was all so damn _open_ , like anything could come from _anywhere_ , and then where would he be?

Maybe it was the overthinking, maybe it was the stress of the last two days, maybe it was just every cord of patience he had snapping at once, but he reverted to something he hadn’t done since he was a kid, something he was totally aware was ridiculous, but needed to do _anyway_.

Going to the closet, he opened the door and pushed himself up onto his toes to pull down a plush blanket. It was small, barely wide enough to wrap around his shoulders or long enough to reach his feet, one of those cheap throw blankets that they sold at every Walmart ever. The same kind do-gooders handed out, sometimes. They were good blankets, warm and everything, but you could almost never hang onto them for more than a few days. They were good to trade and would just take up too much space in whatever bag you’d managed to hold onto, especially if you moved a lot, which you had to.

But it was familiar, under his fingers.

He dumped the blanket on the floor, shut the closet door carefully (he wasn’t sure how close the guys’ room _was_ ), and seized one of the pillows he’d been trying to smother himself with earlier.

Then he shook the blanket out, gripped it tightly, dropped to the floor, and crawled under the bed before reaching out to drag the pillow in after him.

It was fucking stupid and he was acting like a goddamn two year old child, but with the bed pushed into the corner, it was nice and secluded underneath. A few inches of space between the frame and the floor let him see out into the room, the only way to get to him now he had his back to a wall. He could breathe again and the silence didn’t seem nearly as oppressive as it had before.

The pillow was thick and soft and he dropped his head onto it gratefully, already starting to relax.

Why was this so much easier? Why couldn’t he just be a fucking normal person that could stay in a normal fucking bed?

If he couldn’t even _sleep_ like a normal person, how in the name of fucking Christ was he supposed to _live_ like one?


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, all! Sorry, running a little late again, I was trying to get farther in what I have in reserve to make sure I wouldn't need to go back and tweak any of this, buuuuut I didn't get as far as I wanted as soon, so do not be alarmed if certain words and phrases get tweaked in post, lol
> 
> This chapter and the next one or two are going to be fairly... not SLOW, but not super dramatic because they're more setup than anything. Have no fear, though, we'll get back to hurt/comfort and tearing apart emotional stability soon enough!
> 
> Enjoy!

Waking up took a long, long time, even though it never really felt like he feel _asleep_.

Every few seconds he’d drift close to consciousness, surface just long enough to think he should get up, then slip back under before he could do a fucking thing.

Only when the room started to fill with a pale blue light did he really wake up, and even then he wasn’t totally sure he was a person and not just a lump of clay that had been mashed into the carpet.

That goddamn sleep-stupidity again, he didn’t want to think, let alone _move_ , he just wanted to close his eyes and let the weight his eyelids drag him back under. Surely if he let it, it would be easier to get up, next time.

But he couldn’t. Going from the light, it was after dawn, though not by much. He couldn’t risk sleeping too long. If someone came to wake him up, saw him under the fucking bed like a fucking toddler, there was no way he’d ever be able to look them in the eyes again, let alone find a way to sleep.

Dragging himself out from under the bed felt like the hardest thing he’d done in the last damn decade. God, he just wanted to _rest_ , he was _so_ tired. Tired and stiff and sore and, god, he just wanted to _stop_. The clothes Ryan had leant him were warm and soft and too big- he felt like he was wearing blankets, could lie down wherever and just stay there forever.

But he was up early. It was early and a Saturday, the guys would almost definitely be asleep still. So he could take advantage of the shower in the bathroom, as long as he hurried.

Well, no, it would be useless to get clean if he didn’t have anything to wear, after. His things from the day before were dirty, and he wasn’t going to drip all over the clothes he’d been loaned to sleep in.

Ray had taken his clothes to wash, maybe they’d be done? He’d seen the laundry room, just inside the house, coming in from the garage. He could check, there wouldn’t be anything wrong with that, right? It wasn’t like he could mess anything up just by _looking_.

But when he pushed the door open to slip out, there was a faint light in the kitchen, the sound of someone moving around. And the door itself felt heavier, like-

There was a canvas bag hanging from the knob on the outside of the guest room door. Carefully, he lifted it off and pulled it in, shutting the door silently behind him.

His clothes were neatly folded inside. From the brand new things to his oldest, faded pair of threadbare jeans. They were _clean_ and… softer? Was that a thing? They definitely felt softer, even the denim. How did that work?

But… it was so _early_. Had the laundry finished the night before or…?

Why was anyone even up? They had Saturday off, right? Actually, they hadn’t said anything about it, he’d just assumed-

A quiet, barely audible knock came from the door and Michael hastily kicked the blanket and pillow from the night before back under the bed.

Then he stood dead still in the middle of the room for a second before realizing- the person in the hall was waiting for him to say something.

“Uh… come in?” It felt _wrong_ to be basically giving someone permission to go somewhere in their own home, but he didn’t know what _else_ he could fucking say.

The door creaked open and Jack poked his head in, smiling a little in greeting.

“Hey, glad you’re up. When Gavin wakes up, I was thinking we should run some errands, if you’re good with it. He could take hours, though, so you’ve got time if you want to shower or something.”

Michael narrowed his eyes. “Are these actually errands or am I getting dragged to the fucking dentist now?”

Making Jack laugh was a good thing, even though Michael had been completely serious. “We’ve got several places to hit. Sound good?”

Wanting to say something about Jack dodging the question, but not wanting to seem like a pushy jackass was incredibly frustrating. “Are you the only one up right now?”

“No, Geoff, Ray, and Ryan headed out about half an hour ago.” Seeing Michael’s surprised look, Jack just shrugged. “I wasn’t going to ask yet. They’ll be back later. Come on out after you get ready, I’ll make breakfast.”

And then he left, with Michael barely able to get out a soft ‘alright’ before the door closed behind him.

Fuck. What was going _on_?

The silence was oppressive, in the early morning stillness. It had been one thing when he was trying to sleep, but being totally conscious made it feel almost… heavy? There were no sirens or crackling fires or car engines or gunfire (distant or otherwise). It was just… quiet.

It made his skin crawl and he hurried into the bathroom, shutting and locking the door behind him.

After turning the shower on so the water could heat up, he took off his shirt to fold it and put it aside, caught sight of himself in the mirror, and cringed.

The black eye had faded a lot, would probably be totally gone in a few more days, but it was still visible, as were the bruises from the alley fight a week ago, though the one that darkened his stomach was worse than the others.

But the bruises from the fight a few _days_ ago? They’d only just reached their darkest. The one on his right arm, above the elbow, looked _really_ fucking bad. Like, can’t believe the damn bone didn’t break bad. The ribs on his right side didn’t look great either. And they still hurt a shit load.

He didn’t _think_ they were cracked or anything. When he breathed deep, they ached, but not so bad he had to stop. There weren’t any sharp pains or anything.

Still. He’d need to keep an eye on them.

The bandages on his arm went in the trash, and his arm itself didn’t look better, but didn’t really look worse? Kinda red still. Sort of itchy, but that was probably just from it being wrapped up to long. It was hard to keep himself from scratching it, but that would just make things worse.

Hot water would help. Hot water helped _everything_.

The showerhead was so high pressured that, when he turned it on full blast, the sound of water striking the tile so hard made him jump.

Oh. Oh this was going to be _nice_.

He didn’t know if the others had showered before they left or if there was all that much hot water left, so he got in the second the glass started to fog with heat.

Water that hot would have stung no matter what, but combined with the needle-like pressure jabbing at his skin, it was doubly painful.

It was _bliss_.

His arm hurt like fuck, but, again, that was probably a good thing.

There wasn’t any soap or anything, but he didn’t care. Just washing off like he was made him feel cleaner than he had in ages. Likewise, he didn’t mind the lack of towel, there was probably some in the cabinets he just hadn’t thought to check. But he was perfectly content to stand, breathing in the steam as the water rolled down his skin until he was dry enough to get out without tracking water everywhere.

Towels were, in fact, in a cabinet by the sink. He grabbed one and scuffed his hair dry, because water was good when it was hot, but cold drops running down the back of your neck was decidedly not.

Carefully, he patted his arm dry and rebandaged it. Then he pulled on clean clothes ( _his_ clean clothes, how fucking awesome was that?) and stood contemplating the door for three or four minutes.

He did need to go out at some point before Armageddon, but… he really didn’t want to know what ‘errands’ Jack had in store this time. Just the _thought_ of anything like the last time they’d gone out together… he couldn’t even fathom the idea. The idea of allowing something like that again was just not one he could process.

Eventually, he forced himself forward and opened the door, slowly, hoping to go unnoticed for as long as possible.

Jack was in the kitchen, his back to Michael as he worked with something on the counter top in from of him. He was either humming or mumbling under his breath, but seemed to be in good spirits, all told.

At least he _was_ , until he turned around, saw Michael, and jumped. “Holy shit! You are really fucking quiet, dude.”

Great. Awesome way to start off the day, Michael, you fucking jackass. “Sorry-”

But Jack was already waving it off. “You’re good. Want an omelet?”

“The fuck is that?” The word sounded sort of familiar, but even if he’d heard it before, he had no idea what it meant.

Jack faltered for a second, just long enough for Michael to realize that was probably a way more common word than he thought, fuck, but recovered almost faultlessly. “Come over here, I’ll show you.”

There was a cutting board with chunks of… sausage, maybe? And a couple of small bowls and a carton of eggs to the right of the stovetop. A wide pan was already on a burner and Jack turned on the heat before cracking a couple of eggs into an empty bowl, pouring in some milk, mixing it all together, and pouring it into the pan.

It had been… a very, very long time since Michael had last seen someone cook. There was something about the process that just felt really… really fucking good just to be _near_. Not warm fuzzies good, but. He couldn’t explain it. It just felt more… real, than other things. Kind of solid.

Jack was throwing sausage and cheese and vegetables onto the half-cooked circles of eggs. But he wasn’t scrambling them around, which was about as far as Michael’s knowledge of cooking eggs went, so it was all interesting.

Not interesting enough to keep him from looking over at the sharp-looking knife by the cutting board every so often (he really needed to replenish his supply), but he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and focused on watching as Jack flipped the circle in half, effectively sandwiching the different ingredients inside the egg.

“This is an omelet,” Jack said, still keeping an eye on the pan. “You can put whatever you want in it, so it’s got one hell of a variety.”

“Huh,” Michael tried not to sound too interested as he craned his neck to see what was in all the little bowls. Meat, cheese, mushrooms, chunks of vegetables he couldn’t name, onions…

So much food.

“Know what you want?” Jack asked, flipping the cooked omelet onto a plate and sliding it into the oven, which opened with a wave of warm, but not hot, air.

Scoffing, Michael shrugged half sarcastically. “Everything?”

“I can do that.” Jack’s tone was only half joking too. “Can’t promise it won’t fall apart on you, though.”

“Dude, it’s going to taste the same, I don’t give a shit what it looks like.”

Inclining his head, Jack just said, “Fair enough. There’s coffee in the pot and creamer in the fridge if you want some. Mugs are in the cabinet right of the sink.”

Letting Jack cook for him didn’t really sit well with Michael, but he was hardly going to try and cook anything, he’d probably just wind up setting the entire damn kitchen on fire. Plus, the smell of coffee had been driving him slowly crazy for the last few minutes.

The coffee he knew, from convenience stores and shitty cardboard containers, always tasted burnt and sour and needed so much added to it before it could be stomached. But just the smell of the coffee in the pot was enough to let him know that it wasn’t even in the same league.

Black coffee was pushing it, so he just stuck with cream (real, _actual_ cream, from a carton that had to be refrigerated, not just tiny lukewarm plastic cups), but held off on the flavored creamer and sugar, out of curiosity.

He took a sip. Then he sat down heavily at the bar, cupped his hands around the warm ceramic, and just breathed in the smell.

“Good?” Jack asked, though his tone of voice made it perfectly clear he knew the answer.

“I will choke the shit out of anyone who tries to take this away from me,” Michael swore. Jack laughed again and this was okay. It was easier, when there’s weren’t fucking five of them at a time.

A comfortable silence settled, broken only by the sizzling of the pan as Jack cooked and the occasional clink of Michael’s mug on the surface of the bar.

This quiet wasn’t bad. If anything, it was kind of relaxing. It didn’t feel full or oppressive. Just empty, like it was patiently waiting to be filled.

Glancing around, Michael caught sight of the windows from the night before and, yeah, there was a backyard out there. The majority of it was taken up by a blue tarp spread out over a, okay, wow, these guys had a pool in their backyard.

His thoughts were broken by Jack coming over and setting a plate and some honest-to-god silverware in front of him.

The omelet wasn’t _quite_ falling apart, but it was definitely less egg and more everything else in the goddamn fridge. But it was hot and solid, in a weird sort of way. There was such a huge difference between this sort of food and the kind he was used to- wrapped in plastic and two months past expiration.

He stuffed a forkful of egg and mushroom in his mouth to keep from saying that out loud.

The nice quiet lasted through the both of them eating. Michael systematically demolished his breakfast, mentally cataloguing everything he didn’t know the name of and what it tasted like, so he could find out more about it later. He also pretended he couldn’t feel the weight of Jack’s gaze on the top of his head as he chased a stray bit of spinach around the plate with his fork.

Jack’s plate clinked as he set it aside and Michael looked up and saw Jack folding his hands and leveling him with a look and oooooooooh no. No. Things had been going so _well_ , he didn’t want to have a _talk_.

“About the errands I mentioned earlier,” Jack started and- fuck.

Was defensive eating a thing? Because if Michael’s mouth was full, there was no way Jack could expect him to answer. And he could pretend to chew that mouthful of egg, cheese, and peppers as long as he needed to.

“I know you don’t like it when we spend money on you,” Jack was determinedly plowing through the silence that had turned distinctly awkward. “But like Burnie said, it’ll be a while before Rooster Teeth can hire you on legally and we do want to do this right. But I want to get you some basics- basics by _our_ standards, not yours,” he insisted when Michal half-choked in his haste to swallow so he could say he had everything he needed.

Michael took a sip of his now-lukewarm-but-still-fucking-awesome coffee both to stall and to keep himself from choking to death. And then he said, “I don’t need anything” anyway, because really, fuck that.

“You’re going to be here a while,” Jack said and Michael dug his fingers into the denim covering his thigh, forcing himself to focus on anything but the way his insides squirmed at those words. “At least some more clothes, soap and stuff for the bathroom…” he hesitated, then hurried on like he was trying to sound like he hadn’t, “maybe new shoes.”

Why was his voice hopeful. Why was he invested in this.

“I don’t need anything,” Michael said again, but he couldn’t bring himself to be angry about it, or frustrated, or even particularly _loud_. “I can wait.” He’d waited a long time already, it was fine.

“If you want,” Jack said, though he didn’t sound happy about it, “you can hang onto the receipts. That way, once you do start getting paid- but!” he held up a hand when Michael opened his mouth again. “If we do that, you _have_ to let _us_ decide what’s necessary and what’s not. Because you will not buy fucking anything. And if at any point you think it’s too much or unreasonable, then you say so and _we_ get to pay for it. Full stop. Fair?”

Slowly, Michael shut his mouth and thought about that.

 _Was_ it fair? It was a compromise, but did it make _sense_?

This way they’d be happy and he could still pay them back- but if they just kept getting stuff it’d just put him farther in debt, but- but Jack said at any point he could take it back so there was no way they could really trap him- but if they reached that point it would just be _so much_ -

Cloth shuffling startled him from his thoughts and he turned toward the hall to the bedrooms just in time to see Gavin come staggering out like a zombie. A zombie with hair that seemed to be trying escape and no shirt and sweatpants that _definitely_ did not belong to him if the fact that he had to keep pulling them up by the waistband was any clue.

Michael allowed himself a full two and a half seconds to stare at Gavin’s hipbones before attempting to drown himself in his coffee.

Jack ignored his attempt at noble suicide and just held out an arm so Gavin could come over and drape himself across his shoulders, making mumbling noises into his neck that might someday, if they were very good, be speech. “Morning, Gav.” Gavin made a high pitched whining noise of protest and groped blindly towards the table until Jack handed over his coffee cup. “You’ve got an omelet in the oven.”

Gavin lifted his head from where he was trying to inhale the coffee, looking slightly lucid now, and nodded his thanks. Then he looked over at Michael and blinked, like he was surprised to see him there. A slow, sleepy smile spread across his face. “Good morning, Michael!”

Funny, he was sure there’d been air in the room ten seconds ago.

“What, no good morning for me?” Jack’s voice was teasing, but then Gavin leaned towards him making exaggerating kissing sounds and he lurched back, slapping a hand over Gavin’s mouth. “No, you do not get to kiss me until you’ve brushed your teeth.”

“Minge,” Gavin complained, but he wandered over to the oven to retrieve his breakfast. “Where’s everyone?”

“They headed out earlier,” Jack explained, shrugging when Gavin shot him a confused look. “No clue, I’m sure we’ll get the story later.”

Brushing it off, Gavin started pulling chunks from his omelet, not even bothering with utensils. “So what are we doing then? Can’t just bum around the house all day.”

There was silence for a second, before Michael realized Jack was giving him a questioning look. Right. That.

If he stalled for thought much longer, he ran the risk of Gavin catching on that something was wrong and he did _not_ want to have that conversation. He could always back out later, so he nodded.

Jack smiled, then turned back to Gavin. “We’re taking Michael shopping.”

Gavin stared, then beamed. “Top! That’ll teach them to bugger off without us. Where do you want to go first, Michael?”

Oh fucking hell. “I don’t know what’s around here, remember?”

“We could just start at the store,” Jack pointedly suggested. “Get some basic stuff, tooth brush, shampoo-”

Gavin rolled his eyes. “Boring stuff, Jack!”

“Necessary stuff, Gav,” Jack pointed out, but he was still smiling.

“So long as we get to go look at cool stuff too,” Gavin said, setting his half-finished omelet aside and making a beeline for the coffee. He shot a grin at Michael over his shoulder. “We’ll find you _something_ brilliant!”

That was quickly becoming one of Michael’s deepest held fears.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm late!! I'm having surgery on my dominant hand tomorrow afternoon (why am I a lefty, why couldn't I have been like most of the fucking population I'm going to be crippled for weeks and no one is going to believe me) and I've been prepping for that. I REALLY hope this won't slow down my update schedule, I can type one-handed with both hands, dominant one be damned, it'll just be a bit slowly. But then, I also have off work for a bit, so I have more time, so it could go either way. I will certainly keep you guys up to date as I can.
> 
> Also, shoutout to Sullimonster for making a Medley PLAYLIST, def go check out the link in the comments and see my embarrassing enthusiastic screaming, I have no filter and I was very excited. <3 <3 <3
> 
> (PS I finished this chapter like ten minutes ago and haven't proofread it because I have to go to bed now, but I also didn't want to postpone the chapter again so please be patient if the last third is riddled with typos I swear to god I will fix them later)
> 
> (PPS I swear we'll be getting back to the super emotional stuff next chapter, I'm very excited about it. Like, we're gonna get a little cluster of dramatic scenes it's gonna be great, so please hang in there with me for the slow stuff!)

Michael had been in grocery stores before. Granted, they were small, but still. Grocery stores were not news to him.

A ‘Super Target’ was not a grocery store.

The grocery stores he knew were dimly lit with dead-eyed cashiers and little more than the basics. Hawk-eyed owners and managers kept a sharp watch for quick fingers, making it borderline not worth it to try anything there, so he tended to avoid the places.

Currently, he was standing in a building with ceilings so high he got dizzy looking up, set in with skylights that cast the whole open area in a warm light that made everything it touched clear.

And it touched a LOT.

“Michael!” And then Gavin was _in his face_ , pointing at the shelf to his right. “Which one do you want?”

They were in the section of the store that had soap and shampoo and shit and that section alone was larger than most grocery stores Michael was familiar with. He was pretty sure this whole aisle on both sides was just shit for the shower.

And Gavin was trying to get him to pick between- he squinted at the bottles. Shampoo? The bottles said shampoo, but the labels were things like ‘mountain peak’ and ‘glacier’, what the fuck did that have to do with hair?

“Dude, I don’t give a fuck.”

“You have to pick _something_ , Michael!” Gavin complained loudly.

Rolling his eyes, Michael took a smart step back and craned his head towards the main aisle to see if Jack had caught up with them yet and could save him from Gavin’s enthusiasm. Seeing nothing helpful whatsoever, he sighed and said, “If you care so much, _you_ pick.”

“Alright, I will!” And then the Brit started walking up and down the aisle, giving each item he came across _way_ more interest than it warranted.

“You probably shouldn’t have given him that much power,” Jack’s voice was warning, though threaded through with humor, and Michael turned, opening his mouth to fire back… something… when he saw-

“We do not need a fucking _cart_ ,” he spat, not really thinking about it.

Giving him a patient look, Jack pulled up beside him. “We get to pick, remember?”

“That’s not-” growling a little under his breath, Michael glanced over to make sure Gavin was still distracted by all the fucking bottles of fucking goo, “I don’t know what you define as ‘necessary’, but it sure as shit isn’t going to be _reasonable_ if you think I won’t be able to carry it all out of here in one bag.”

Jack paused for a second before saying, “We’re not getting anything crazy, I mean it’s not like we’re getting you anything all that expensive yet-”

“ _Yet_?!” Michael hadn’t really been trying to whisper there, but he barely had any air left so it sort of came out that way.

“You’re going to need stuff for work,” Jack’s face had gone from casual to ‘calm the psycho down’, which, fair, but that didn’t mean Michael was _happy_ about it, “so it’ll be a work expense, the company will pay for all your equipment just like they did for us.”

He took a sharp step backwards when it looked like Jack was going to walk toward him and immediately slammed into another body. Whirling away, he forced himself to not bolt or lash out or anything but freeze and _breathe_ when he saw Gavin.

“Oop, sorry Michael,” Gavin said distractedly, walking up to the cart and dumping what looked like half the aisle into it.

“ _What the actual fuck_?”

“ _Gavin_ ,” Jack somehow managed to turn an exasperated sigh into the name, “that’s overkill and you know it.”

“But Michael has such nice hair!” Gavin protested, turning back and reaching out and-

Was Gavin fucking petting him?

He was, Gavin was honest to god moving his hand in short little rhythmic strokes over Michael’s scalp and _what the fuck was he supposed to do with that_?

“And this way,” Gavin continued, turning back to Jack and the cart and away from the nervous meltdown that was quickly approaching Michael's mind, “he can try a bunch of different kinds and see what he likes!”

Jack slipped his fingers under his glasses to press against his eyes. “That’s what the travel sizes are for, Gavin. Put those up and go get the samples.”

“Oooooh,” Gavin looked over his shoulder at a collection of wire baskets on the far wall, “forgot about those.”

“Obviously.”

As Gavin fumbled the bottles back to where they belonged, Michael stared pointedly at the floor, though he could feel Jack’s gaze on the top of his head.

Shit. He’d come really close to freaking out again. Mother _fucker_ , he didn’t _want_ that! And now Jack knew he was still unpredictable and that… that was a thing. Good, bad, it depended on what your view of Michael getting kicked out was. And, to be honest, he wasn’t all that sure of his own opinion there.

Reaching up, he ran a hand through his hair and, yeah. It was too long. _Way_ , too long, especially for Texas. It had been a little cooler when they’d left, so he had his jacket, but Gavin had been rambling about the forecast, so he knew it was supposed to be in the seventies, sometimes even the _eighties_ , for the foreseeable future.

“Do you guys have scissors I can use?” he asked quietly, trying not to make it seem too much like he was changing the subject.

A beat of silence. Then, “Yeah, but we can also take you to get a haircut, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

The shudder ripped through Michael’s body so violently he _knew_ it was visible and hurried on before Jack could ask. “No. That’s- I’d rather do it.”

Another brief silence. “Alright, if that’s what you want.”

Jack’s voice was calm, almost measuredly so. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

He was doing it again, he was doing it a-fucking-gain, with the freaking people out and make them think god-knew-what. But that was the point, he didn’t know _what_ they thought, let alone how to stop them from thinking it.

This was a fucking terrible idea, what the hell had he been thinking? Maybe he’d been normal before, but that was years ago, he couldn’t just go back to that and expect it not to be a square-peg-round-hole situation.

He had to- he needed-

It would take a blind person to not realize how closely the guys were watching him. So it’d be hard to slip away, but not _impossible_. And if he just left the tags on everything they got him and left the receipts behind, they could just return it all and it’d be fine-

A _cascade_ of tiny bottles fell into the cart and it was a goddamn miracle Gavin hadn’t dropped half of them on his way over.

“Do you think I’m going to _bathe_ in that shit?” Michael heard himself ask distantly.

“This way you’ll have tried more! Data is good.”

Michael lifted his eyes to the ceiling and considered uttering his prayer for patience out loud. “How the fuck are you completely fucking ridiculous most of the time, then you turn into a scientist when it’s convenient or you have a camera worth more than a goddamn house that you use to record fucking firecrackers blowing up legos?”

The lack of response had him looking warily over at Gavin who was just- staring at him.

Fuck, what did he do, did he say something wrong, shit what if that was a nerve and he just stomped all over it like a fucking asshole, what-

But then Gavin’s whole face changed. The blank stare melted off his face and his whole expression went all soft and weird before he grinned so hard the corners of his eyes crinkled with the force of it. “You watched my slow mo videos!”

… uh… “Yeah?”

With a weird motion that was part enthusiastic vibration and part hopping in place, Gavin somehow grinned even wider, hands flexing at his sides like he was restraining himself from grabbing at Michael which was- new. “You didn’t know us before! So- did you look for them or…?”

Jesus Christ, hadn’t Geoff- okay, no, he couldn’t expect every little thing he said to make its way through all five of the guys, that was fucking stupid. “Yeah. I remembered what you said, so I looked you up… after.” Yeah, awkward, just gonna move right past that. “I don’t understand how you haven’t fucking killed Dan by accident yet.”

“It’s been close.” But he was still _grinning_ , like he’d gotten the best news _ever_ , what the shit?

Plastic squeaked against tile as Jack turned the cart back towards the main aisles. “Where to next?”

“Electronics!” Gavin declared and Michael nearly hit the fucking floor.

“I was thinking more along the lines of toothbrushes, Gav,” Jack said, amused but also a little firm. “This is a run for the essentials.”

Ignoring Gavin muttering under his breath about how electronics _were_ essential, Michael ducked his head into the next aisle, grabbed the cheapest toothbrush and toothpaste he saw, chucked them in the cart, and glared Jack down when it looked like he was going to comment.

Apparently deciding that wasn’t the hill he wanted to die on, Jack sighed and pushed the cart along. As they passed one of the (many) clothing sections, he pointed and said. “Gav, remember. _Essentials_.”

Lighting up like it was Christmas morning, Gavin declared, “Right!” and looped his arm through Michael’s, dragging him into the racks of clothing.

“What are you doing?” Michael asked, though he was annoyed to find the feeling in his chest was more resignation than anger.

“We have to fill up your _closet_ , Michael,” Gavin said, like it was obvious, and Michael dug his heels in, bringing them up short.

It was Gav. It was _Gavin_ , he needed to not freak out Gavin but- “You are _not_ buying enough to fill up a whole closet,” he snarled, glaring down at his ratty shoes so he wouldn’t make Gavin think he was mad at him.

“Of course not, Michael,” and Gavin rolling his eyes there was _audible_. “It’s dumb to buy all your clothes from _one_ place. Plus, you’ll get lots of shirts from work. They give you as many free ones as you want. Like that one,” he nodded to the green shirt Michael had on.

That was- not at _all_ what he’d meant. “I-”

“But you can’t _just_ have T-shirts, Michael,” Gavin was very earnest. “I’ll help you pick stuff, don’t worry.”

“I’ve seen you wear pink fucking cargo shorts under a lab coat before,” Michael said on autopilot. “I’m not sure you’re the best fashion guru, dude.”

“I _can_ be!” Gavin insisted. “I’m helpful!”

“Uh huh.”

“I’ll show you!”

And that was how Michael found himself locked in a stall in the very back of a changing area in a Super Target for the better part of an hour while Gavin tossed clothes over the door and demanded he show them off. The only think that kept Gavin from being in the changing room with him was the fact that Michael had physically kicked him out the first time he needed to change- an action Gavin had whined loudly about until Michael finished putting on the clothes and opened the door again.

“I don’t know why you keep grabbing stuff that’s too fucking big. We figured out my size, dude,” Michael groused, tugging at the excess fabric of the cargo pants he had on and making sure the belt was secure. Gavin just kept fucking grabbing stuff one size too big, was that a new thing? Was there a reason for that? Gavin’s clothes seemed to fit him, so what the fuck?

“It’s fine!” Gavin called from outside the door. “C’mon mate, quit stalling and get out here!”

“There is _nothing_ that has been worth buying!” Michael called back. The employees had long since quit hiding their snickering at his and Gavin’s shouting matches, probably because the rest of the stalls were fucking abandoned. “I don’t know what you’re hoping to find dude, but it’s not going to be the fucking holy grail of fashion!”

“I’m not asking you to do a _runway show_ , Michael, you’re not _Ryan_!”

“The _fuck_ does that have to d-”

A much softer voice drifted through the door, “Are you two going to get us kicked out? I could hear you from the aisle.”

“No, Jack, they said we’re _entertaining_.”

“That’s not always a good thing.” Then, slightly louder, “Find anything, Michael?”

Looking down at himself, Michael tried to ignore the heat rising to his face and shifted uncomfortably. The stiff fabric across his shoulders pulled and he grimaced when he looked at himself in the mirror.

On anyone else the outfit probably would have looked normal. The cargo pants were fine, pockets were good, pockets were helpful. But the T-shirt was white and he wasn’t even really okay touching the damn thing in case he got something on it, never mind actually wearing it. And the button-down Gavin had insisted needed to be worn open with the sleeves rolled up- that felt…

It felt like spiders crawling under his skin, he wanted to rip it off, not take it off, he wanted it destroyed, the _wrongness_ of it on his body was making him flush and sweat and twitch and it wasn’t _right_. A different person would fit in that shirt, not him, not someone like him, not someone with too-long hair and still-visible bruises.

“No,” he answered, and his voice only wavered a little as he pulled both shirts off and started to change back into his clothes.  Hopefully they could finally get out of this damn building. “Gavin has weird fucking taste, man.”

“I do _not_!”

Leaving the clothes hanging up in the dressing room, he stepped out and shoved his hands deep in his pockets and held them there. Frowning in thought, he looked down the hall and toward the aisle, then turned back to Jack. “Where’s the cart?”

“I went ahead and got everything in the car, I wanted to give y’all a little more time.” Nudging Gavin, he asked, “Ready?”

“Yup!” Gavin said- hefting a basket, where did he even get that??

“What the fuck?” Michael didn’t recognize any of the stuff in it, looked like a couple of shirts, multi-packs socks and stuff, a couple pairs of pants- “When did you get all that shit?!”

Gavin peeked around him into the dressing room, saw the clothes hanging up, and visibly pouted. “You were in there a long time, Michael. How come you wouldn’t let us see?”

Managing to control his shudder, but only just, he rolled his eyes and pushed past. “It doesn’t fucking matter, can we go now?” It was later in the day now. The store was starting to get bigger and he couldn’t see everyone and there was shit everywhere blocking his view. Aisles and clothes racks and shelves- his eyes kept trying to go in every direction. The background hum of the store just seemed to LOUD all of a sudden.

“Michael, hang on.”

He didn’t _want_ to hang on, he wanted to get _out_. Sucking in air through his teeth, he turned and saw Jack reaching into his pocket for something.

“Alright, here,” he reached out, hand curled into a fist, and Michael automatically held out his hand, only to jump when a tangle of warm metal fell into his palm. Shifting his grip so the keys wouldn’t tumble out of his hand, he stared up at Jack in bewilderment. The older man shrugged, “There’s no reason you have to stand in line with us, you can go chill in the car, if you want.”

Narrowing his eyes, Michael considered that. He was almost positive Jack was using this as an excuse to get him out of the way to throw more things in that little basket of Gavin’s, which already had more stuff in it that he was really okay with. On the other hand, he really wanted to get out of the fucking building and Jack had already promised him the receipts. And he could bail if they did something dumb, which was almost a fucking guarantee.

But also Jack was handing him the keys to an SUV that he’d already said had a bunch of groceries in it and he was a damn stupid guy for that. Part of Michael wanted to make that abundantly fucking clear, but another part wanted to prove he was actually not going to be a half-crazy feral person off the streets, despite the fact that that was _exactly_ what he fucking was.

These guys were definitely going to be the death of him, he could tell that a week and a half into meeting them.

Clutching the keys a little tighter, so they wouldn’t fall, he shrugged. “I’m not gonna turn down hanging in the car while you stand in line for ten minutes.”

Gavin frowned, looked sideways at Jack, who was already staring down at him. “No. I’m not going to check out for you so you can go sit in the car with Michael, I’ve already done this once today, you’re lucky I’m coming with you at all.”

Rolling his eyes, Gavin’s shoulders slumped. “ _Fine_.”

Smirking a little, Michael hooked a finger through the keyring and gave it a little spin. He probably ought to wait in line with them. There were probably manners about something like that. He almost cared, but he also _still_ wanted to get out of the fucking building. “See ya, Gav.”

Being glared at by Gavin was like being glared at by one of those tiny dogs that got carried around in purses, it was fucking hilarious.

He wasn’t sure why, but he kept wanting to speed up as he walked to the exit, to power walk, jog, sprint, and he hadn’t even _stolen_ anything. Running would make people think he had, though, and that was the last thing he needed, so he just kept his pace steady and exhaled when the sliding glass doors released him into the open world.

It was like a release of pressure, like white noise that had gotten louder and louder without him noticing.

Now, if he could just remember where the damn car was, he’d be golden. It would help if the parking lot wasn’t roughly the size of a city block.

Why were there a million cars that all looked the goddamn same? Why did people only buy cars in white, silver, navy, and red? And why the fuck did the guys even have a soccer mom van any- well, okay, that actually made sense if you had enough boyfriends to technically be able to have your own basketball team.

He eventually found it, once he remembered that if you had one of those things with buttons on the keyring, you could click one of them and make the car honk. The red button with a speaker on it had looked promising, but car alarms were something he was very familiar with, so he was able to guess the purpose of that button pretty quick.

Climbing into the back seat was more of a relief than it should have been, honestly, especially when he reached into the front to lock the doors. Well, right up until he happened to glance over his shoulder and saw the _sea_ of grocery sacks in the back of the car.

One second of cold terror later, he actually thought to lean over the seat and look inside one of the bags and sighed in way, way more relief than he should feel when he realized it was just groceries. Jack must have taken the opportunity to get some shopping done while he was waiting for them. That was probably going to fuck up the receipt, though. He probably knew that. Bastard.

Dropping down to lay across the back seat of the car, he looked up at the grey sky through the window and let his eyes fall shut.

Everything was so _quiet_ , how did these people stand it? There were different kinds of silences, yeah, and some could be, y’know, kinda nice. But some were just… like a weight. Either like a crushing one or like expectation, like you _had_ to fill it and the pressure was making it worse.

He wasn’t sure if he drifted off or if the lines were actually way shorter than Jack had implied, but it felt like seconds later the rapping of knuckles against glass was sending him rocketing into a sitting position, his heart tripping from restful to practically a vibration in his chest.

Gavin was grinning at him through the glass and Michael forced his face to relax as he leaned back into the front seat to unlock the car.

Of course, Gavin swung in to the backseat to join him because calming down from the adrenaline rush in peace was not a grace the universe was going to fucking give him, apparently. At least he dropped the bags he was carrying (three, _way_ more than Michael would have gotten, Christ, did these guys not know to pack light?) in the seat between them. That helped.

“- not actually a meal, you know.” Jack’s voice was deeply disapproving as he opened the drivers’ side door and climbed in, accepting the keys Michael held out instantly.

“What’s a _meal_ , it’s just food, _everything’s_ a meal, right, Michael?”

“I have not been here a fucking day and already know better than to take your side in anything before I hear the whole fucking story.”

“That’s not very nice!” Gavin exclaimed in dismay, but it was obvious he wasn’t actually offended and Jack was laughing as he pulled out of the parking space, so it was all fine. “Come on, who _doesn’t_ want milkshakes? Is there anyone on the planet ever who doesn’t want a milkshake and _all_ times?”

“People who are lactose intolerant,” Jack said immediately.

Gavin made a dismissive noise. “They don’t count.”

“We aren’t going to have milkshakes for _lunch_ , Gavin.”

“We could though!”

“’Can’ and ‘should’ are not the same thing.”

Normally he’d have been more than content to sit back and watch the rapid-fire bantering, but Michael was pretty sure they were headed the opposite direction of the house, which didn’t make sense if they were trying to decide where to go next. Especially not with groceries in the back, didn’t you have to put that shit away pretty quick?

“Where are we going?” he asked, when Gavin paused for breath.

“I wanted to hit one more place right quick, then we’ll pick up food and head back to the house.” Jack being vague was quickly becoming one of Michael biggest fucking pet peeves and this was only the second time it had happened.

He kept his mouth shut about it, though- right up until Jack pulled the car into the parking lot of a shoe store. And not a fucking PayLess either, one look at the display windows and he could tell it was one of those places that sold way more expensive shit.

Jack must have caught his death glare in the rearview mirror, because he didn’t get out of the car immediately after parking like Gavin did, just asked, “What?”

“I am not going in there,” Michael said, trying to keep his voice low and still managing to sound pissed off, even to himself. “Not even you can think this is reasonable. It doesn’t count if you’re _trying_ to get me to say that, asshole.”

“It’s actually a better option to get higher quality stuff for a higher price than stuff you have to replace all the time that costs less- it actually makes you spend more money in the long run.”

Biting back the laugh that wanted to bust out of him (even he could tell that was a little bitter), Michael settled for rolling his eyes. The ‘long run’, god, what a laugh.

“You want to call it?”

Jack’s voice was free of judgement and, when Michael snapped a look at him, so was his face. Nothing could have stopped Michael from bristling, though.

Fuck, what was he supposed to do here? Much as he wanted to, he couldn’t just refuse to move from the car and go back on their deal, he had to do _something_. And of course, Jack had an argument for why this expense made sense.

“I fucking hate you,” he settled on saying as he hopped out of the car and slammed the door just this side of too hard behind him.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you guys have ANY idea how long I was planning the scene at the end of this chapter?
> 
> Forever, forever is how long. It is also, coincidentally, how long this damn chapter it. Do you know how hard it is to write emotionally charged scenes with your non-dominant hand? I've been able to do NOTHING ELSE this week.
> 
> Buuuuut it was worth it. At least, I think so. And I certainly hope you enjoy too!
> 
> Drama, away!!!

He got sick again that afternoon.

It was so fucking stupid, he was _fine_ , except being a little pissed, the whole outing. Didn’t even yell a little when Jack got some guy to fit him with some crazy expensive shoes that were supposed to do stuff shoes shouldn’t be able to do, like fix back problems by supporting your feet differently and straightening your spine out by the way you walk and (yeah he could begrudgingly admit he definitely feel a difference walking in them but they weren’t fucking _magic_ ). Was totally fine when they went to get lunch (it was not milkshakes, but Gavin did insist on going somewhere that offered milkshakes, so of course they all wound up with fucking milkshakes anyway).

An hour after getting back, though?

It was like back at the hotel, heat and nausea and too much pressure in his stomach. Having a room to retreat to was really fucking helpful, especially since it had an attached bathroom and Michael was not above sticking a couple of fingers down his throat so he didn’t have to wait for it to get worse and worse for another hour or two until his body got the idea on its own.

Waste of fucking food and he _hated_ that, hated himself for doing it on _purpose_ , but it was going to happen anyway, he could already tell. Might as well speed it up.

Like the hotel, he instantly felt better, and what the actual shit did that mean? If he had something it shouldn’t have taken so long for him to get sick again, should it? That didn’t make sense, right?

Fuck, he really hoped he wasn’t sick, or at least that he wasn’t contagious, that would- that would just be the crowning glory of this whole backward experience if he somehow got the guy sick just by being near them.

Pretty damn poetically appropriate, though.

At least he had a toothbrush this time. He could never stand the way his teeth felt after he got sick. Toothpaste was hard to get used to again, though. Jesus, did it have to foam so damn much?

He avoided looking in the mirror this time, just headed back out into the bedroom. It didn’t matter what he saw in the mirror, really. The person in it didn’t feel like him and he didn’t need it to calculate the bruises. Those were easy to feel and he _really_ was, especially now that being sick had messed up his move-as-little-as-possible strategy of pain relief.

It was his stomach, or his abs maybe, that hurt the worst. Between the bruises and what the muscles went through when he got sick, that whole area was a throbbing mess that bled upwards into his ribs.

Sluggishly moving forward, he considered his options. Jack and Gavin were under the impression he was organizing where to put all his new shit in the room. He was also pretty sure that they (or at least Jack and Jack’s ability to convince Gavin to do things) were trying to give him space. Which was good, even if he wasn’t sure what they expected him to do with it.

And there were a truly disturbing number of bags on his bed. He was seriously regretting letting Jack out of his sight earlier in the day. Michael wasn’t even sure what half this shit _was_ , just that Jack had separated out the stuff he bought for the house and the stuff he got for Michael. Then there’d been a silent battle of will for the receipts, which Jack did, eventually, hand over.

“If you change your mind,” he’d said, holding out a long piece of paper that had been folded into a thick pad and a significantly smaller one for the shoes, “and think it’s unreasonable or unfair, you can do it any time. Just bring those back to me.”

That wasn’t going to happen. It didn’t really matter what there was in those bags, the only way Jack was getting the receipts back would be if Michael decided not to stay.

And, honestly… the idea of staying still hadn’t really clicked for him. It had felt unreal enough to agree just to work at Rooster Teeth. But this? Staying in this house with the guys? Even standing in the middle of the guest room he’d been told to use, that didn’t feel like a real possibility.

Everything had happened so _fast_ the night before. He’d had to make the choice so fast, he hadn’t really been able to consider it, visualize it. And now he was _here_ and it all felt so strange. But he finally had a chance to stop and think it all through.

Jack was very clearly trying to be as careful and considerate as possible, preferring to either sneak around Michael to do things or brings them up in a way that made it all seem so fucking logical that Michael had to either agree or announce he was stupid. Ryan was being kinder than he had any right to expect, but still didn’t seem comfortable having him around, which was totally fair.

Geoff… was, as always, horrendously difficult to read. But he seemed to have some kind of… guilt thing about what happened and Michael was honestly not sure how to deal with that. Because Geoff hadn’t done anything wrong, even though he thought he had. And having Michael around seemed to make that guilt go away, so… but at the same time, Geoff was distant in the same formal, stilted way Jack was. Like he was worried he’d say or do something wrong and set Michael off again and that- _god_.

There had been foster homes like that. Where the tiniest annoyance, the smallest fucking misstep, would set them off. Living there had been goddamn miserable, and not even because of those explosions, not that those weren’t fucking awful. But the walking-on-eggshells, the _stress_ of knowing it was coming and you had no way of knowing when- no one should _ever_ have to put up with that, let alone in their own home.

Even Gavin, who didn’t even seem to understand that most people had this little thing called ‘personal boundaries’ had seemed to be holding himself back once or twice, which- if there was one person he didn’t want scared of him, it was Gav. Well, him and Ray, but Ray had always, always been on Michael’s wavelength. There hadn’t ever been a problem there.

So. Ray, Gavin, and Geoff would prefer he stay, but it would also definitely stress Geoff out and _maybe_ Gavin a little bit. Ryan would definitely prefer it if he left. Jack seemed able to go either way. He was always kind, but that seemed to be just him as a person and had very little to do with Michael personally.

But if he left… Ray definitely wouldn’t like it, Gavin would probably be upset and, god, the guilt on Geoff’s face when he’d seen Michael in the Achievement Hunter office- he couldn’t put the man through that _again_.

Couldn’t stay, couldn’t go. There had to be _something_. Some way to figure out what was best.

Until then, he took all the bags from the bed and set them in the closet without even looking inside. Pulling the receipts from his back pocket, he tucked them in the nearest one and shut the door.

There was no way he was taking the tags off anything until he decided what to do.

 

* * *

 

When Geoff, Ryan, and Ray came back that evening, something was different.

Michael couldn’t really pinpoint what it was, but something was… lighter. Some of the tension around Geoff’s eyes was gone, Ray seemed more relaxed. Ryan… the way he’d been the day before had reminded Michael of walking on ice, of how you had to hold every part of your body so rigid and carefully controlled because the slightest unintentional shift of weight who have you eating shit before you even realized you were falling.

Ryan wasn’t _totally_ absent of that, but it was a close thing. He seemed way fucking looser, more comfortable and just… settled, maybe. He still looked tired, like how Jack had the first time Michael’d really met him, at the convention after Gavin got mugged.

But he was smiling down at Ray as he did the dishes after dinner, passing them each over so Ray could load the dishwasher. Michael watched from one of the recliners in the living room as Ray exaggeratedly inspected each item passed to him for missed spots, obviously giving Ryan a hard time, but not truly bitching at him, if the smirk he was trying to keep suppressed was any indication.

Ryan said something that had Ray looking up at him, then swooped down to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth, which had Michael whipping his head back around hard enough to injure himself.

There was some movie on that Gavin had insisted Michael needed to watch, but he honestly couldn’t make himself pay attention to it, even before he’d started watching Ray and Ryan. Sitting there felt unreal the way the whole clean-and-warm-and-full-in-February felt unreal. Like if he stopped holding his breath, let himself exhale, the whole fucking thing would shatter like a mirage and reality would reassert itself. Because things didn’t just change like this, weren’t this easy.

He didn’t feel too bad about not paying attention to the movie, especially considering Gavin definitely fucking wasn’t. The Brit was sprawled over the couch, half in Geoff’s lap, gradually falling asleep as Geoff (the only one of them that was paying any attention to the goddamn movie) absently ran fingers through his hair. It was the most still Michael had ever seen Gavin, but it somehow suited him.

A quiet commotion from the kitchen made Michael glance back and apparently the kiss had been a distraction because there were soap suds on Ray’s face now and it looked like he was gearing up to retaliate. But there wasn’t any anger to any of it, so Michael turned away again, stomach twisting.

He wasn’t sure what time it was, but it was dark outside and had been for a while and he… he really needed to sort of get away. Sitting there amidst all the… _homeliness_ of it all didn’t feel right. It was nice in theory, but he wasn’t a part of it and he was going to poison it if he stayed, he needed to slip away before he did.

“You alright, Michael?” Jack asked, looking up from the book that had been demanding _his_ attention. Michael wasn’t too concerned about Jack asking- Gavin’s feet were in his lap, he wasn’t going anywhere.

Shrugging with one shoulder, Michael shuffled toward the hall. “Just tired.”

Lips twitching up, Jack dropped his gaze back to his book and said, “Get some rest.” Geoff gave a lazy little wave and Gavin grumbled something that might have been a ‘goodnight’ and Michael did not run back to the guest room, but his walk may have been a little more brisk than strictly necessary.

Why his heart was beating so fast as he firmly shut the door and leaned against it, he had no idea.

It… it was like- _shit!_

Did they not realize? Did they just not understand? They’d brought a fucking street-kid into their _home_. How could they be so fucking casual?! Did they really think he’d survived as long as he had without stealing? Without breaking the law and taking any advantage he could get?

Did Geoff not remember seeing him deck Ryan? Not remember that he’d been in a knife fight hours after they first met?

Jack _had_ to remember the mental fucking breakdown Michael’d had in the hotel room, _had_ to remember how damn unstable he was.

Even Gavin had to remember how angry Michael’d been in the parking garage.

But fucking no, the only person who seemed to remember that Michael was someone who could actually fuck up their happy family little lives was Ryan and he wasn’t _doing_ anything.

Ray didn’t know. He didn’t _want_ Ray to know.

But he couldn’t trust himself and _they_ sure as fuck couldn’t trust him. He’d hit two of them without meaning to. He wasn’t going to strike out on a third.

He had to leave. They had no fucking self-preservation instincts. Didn’t he have to leave? He was dangerous. They didn’t get it. He’d been right about that, all along. So he had to be the one to make that call.

Didn’t he?

Sinking to the floor, he kept his back to the door and stared blankly at the carpet, just listening as time passed and they started to go to bed. Then he kept sitting there and listened to the silence. It wasn’t oppressive anymore. But it _was_ sort of… empty and cold.

Fuck.

 _Fuck_.

He had to figure it out. He knew what he _should_ do, but keeping them physically safe might upset them and he didn’t want to do _that_ either. Leaving wasn’t something he _wanted_ to do, not after everything had gone so well, not after everyone had been so kind.

But that kindness kept sliding right off him, like it couldn’t get a grip at all. It didn’t sink in like it was supposed to, all the little gestures and concessions the guys were making for him- they didn’t trigger the warm fuzzies that were supposed to be there. Michael was _thankful_ , of course he was, but that was just sense.

He didn’t really… _feel_ anything.

The guys deserved better than that. Deserved better than to have their kindness wasted on him.

… but he didn’t _want_ to go. He didn’t fit, but, god, he _wanted_ to. Wanted to _try_ and stick it out, wanted to try and make it worth it for them, worth all the effort and time and money they’d put into him.

Where the fuck was he supposed to start with that?

Could he even _pretend_ to be capable of it?

Chasing the thoughts around and around hadn’t helped in New Jersey and it wasn’t helping here. Everything had seemed simple when Burnie’d laid it out, but that was before all this, before _staying_ with the guys, before them just… giving so much. Not just the physical stuff, but the obvious attempts Jack was making to compromise.

They were trying. But he just- he couldn’t get there. Couldn’t relax, couldn’t let himself appreciate, let alone enjoy, all the kindness they were pouring out.

It had been quiet for an hour, maybe more, and he knew there was no way he could even try and sleep. Not then. He was used to being much, much more tired than this when he finally slept.

He did change, though. Because it was the dead of night and the best time for him to learn all the ways in and out of the house and it would be so much easier to play off sneaking around if he just claimed he couldn’t sleep.

 _God_ , he was already plotting out how to most efficiently get away with shit and lie to them, he was horrible, he was a shit person.

But the sleeping clothes Ryan had lent him were soft and comfortable, even though wearing clothes so big on him made him feel- weird. Sort of vulnerable. He didn’t like it, but he wasn’t going to take the tags off anything the guys had gotten for him and he needed _some_ reason to justify not having immediately given the clothes back, so, yeah, wearing them again.

It wasn’t like they were dirty after one night or anything, not to any significant degree. They still smelled like detergent and something fainter, maybe cologne, Michael honestly had no way of knowing or trying to tell.

The socks, he left. He hated walking around barefoot, absolutely despised it, and his shoes were by the back door anyway. Well, not _his_ shoes. The shoes Jack had bought him. Jack had wanted to throw _Michael’s_ shoes directly into the trash and, okay, it wasn’t like he didn’t know they _belonged_ there, but it didn’t feel right throwing them out and leaving himself with just the new ones. It almost hadn’t been worth it, the way Jack’s face had contorted like… it wasn’t pity, but like Michael was hurting him, somehow.

So Michael had walked out of the shop with the new shoes on his feet and the old ones in a box under his arm and ignored the concerned looks Jack sent him for the rest of the day.

Fucking dammit, he couldn’t do _anything_ without hurting these guys.

The hall was dark and empty, which… the darkness was nice, broken by the glows of small lights from the television and the oven and the fridge, when he walked out into the big room. The silence felt kind of, unnatural, though.

Lights were what drew his attention to the backyard door. A small square of electronic light at face-level.

An alarm system.

How- he’d gone through the back door to the garage three times and he wasn’t unobservant, how in the _fuck_ had he not noticed an alarm system?

Fuck. _Fuck_.

There was no way he was going to be able to slip out at night, not with that little blinking light telling him the alarm was armed for the night. And if he were the guys, he would _not_ tell the new guy with sticky fingers and a bad attitude the code for the alarm system.

So if he was going to slip out, if he was going to need to do that, it was going to have to be during the day.

Shit.

There was no way he’d get a decent head start with that. Fuck, he was going to have to be around when someone disarmed it, learn the code that way.

It felt more and more like he was casing the place and that thought alone was enough to make his stomach twist and have him forcing his eyes away from the door.

But that just showed him the faint glow down the other hall, towards the garage. That wasn’t a small light, was someone still up?

He should have just gone back to the guest room, tried to get some sleep. But he was too antsy, and even the slightest distraction felt like a good idea.

As it turned out, the door he’d noticed the day before was open now and the glow was coming from inside. Poking his head in, he saw what must have been the second guest room, which also seemed to house the furniture they didn’t know where else to put.

It was on the inside of the house, so there were no windows. There was a bed pushed into one corner, a desk and chair, and a couch facing a low table and a TV on a stand, which was where the light was coming from. The volume was on very low, just enough to provide white noise, not nearly enough for him to actually make out what was being said.

Someone was sitting on the couch and maybe Michael hadn’t been as quiet and careful as he thought, because after just a few seconds of standing there, the person turned to look over their shoulder.

Ryan looked a little surprised to see him, but that also could have been the way the stark blue light from the TV played over his face. Shadows did weird things to a person.

Either way, he recovered fucking fast, offering a small, tired smile. “Hey,” he said softly, voice not quite a whisper, but still cautious that there were sleeping people in the house, never mind they were on the other side of it. His eyes zeroed in on the clothes Michael was wearing and something flickered across his face that made Michael start to tense up, ready to say- something, but the look was gone a second later, so yeah, probably shadows. “Can’t sleep?”

“Uh, no,” Michael shifted in the doorway, not quite sure what to do. He kind of wanted to leave, but… but Ryan was there and everyone else was asleep and… he still… they still needed to talk. With a shaky breath, he stepped closer, “you either?”

“I’ve got insomnia, I don’t sleep much,” Ryan said casually, like it was nothing to just not be able to sleep. He nodded toward the TV, “Sometimes infomercials will be enough to bore me into it but others,” he lifted a laptop into view and shrugged, “might as well get some work done.”

Michael nodded, but still wasn’t sure quite what to do. Fuck, how did people do this? Start hard conversations, know how to lead into a topic? Was it normal? Was he _supposed_ to know?

Ryan stared at him for a second, then shifted over a bit on the couch, so he was on the far right, and nodded toward the long, empty area. “Might work for you, though?”

It was an invitation, but Ryan’s voice was still very careful, and Michael knew he could turn around and leave and Ryan wouldn’t be surprised. He didn’t really _want_ to stay and watch TV, especially when it was supposed to be boring and he wasn’t sure how long he’d need to stay before he could make an excuse and leave but…

But he still needed to talk to Ryan.

The couch was one of those ones with springs that had bitten the fucking dust about a decade ago, so it felt like the damn thing was eating you. It was comfortable, with tiny pillows and a blanket folded over the back, but there was no dignified way to haul yourself out of a couch like that.

“Do you want me to turn the volume up?” Ryan asked, voice a little less hesitant now, even though Michael had practically welded himself to the opposite armrest.

Michael shook his head, “I’m good.” He could barely make out the words if he concentrated, not that he was going to put that much fucking effort in. And this would help him buy some time to figure out… what to say.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ryan place a remote control on the seat cushion between them and give him a long look before turning back to his laptop.

Great. They were going to be stuck in awkward limbo for as long as it took him to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth and figure out how to bring up the not so great way they’d parted last time they saw each other. What with the accusations. And the assault.

Great.

Why the _fuck_ had they allowed him in their home, again?

At first, Michael wasn’t sure why anyone would watch infomercials to force themselves to fall asleep. If you’re awake enough to watch TV, might as well make sure it’s entertaining.

Turned out that wasn’t quite true. Infomercials somehow walked the line of being entertaining (aka, filled with goddamn overdramatic idiots) and boring and repetitive as shit (call now in the next ten minutes and we’ll include a free gift! That’s a free gift, but ONLY if you call in the next ten minutes! Quantities are limited, so to ensure you receive your free gift, call the number on your screen in the next ten minutes!!).

The combination of it all made your thoughts feel equivalent to quicksand when you tried to turn them away, which was not good news for someone who was trying to pretend to be a functioning adult.

Pulling back from that headspace, Michael shuddered as goosebumps ripped through him and he realized, strangely abruptly, that he was a little cold. It had kind of snuck up on him, he should have remembered from last night that the house got cold. Fucking moron.

But he was no stranger to it, and, compared to winter in New Jersey, this barely counted. Drawing his legs up onto the couch with him, he hooked an arm around one of his knees and rested his chin on it as casually as he could manage.

The concentration of body heat was already making him warmer, so he was a little surprised when Ryan shifted to pull the blanket off the back of the couch.

“Here,” he said, holding it out. “Sorry, someday we’ll figure out how to keep this place warm at night.”

Ryan’s tone was light and joking and the blanket he gently pushed into Michael’s hands was some kind of patchwork fleece monstrosity that was soft under his fingers and would definitely be warm and the words just kind of… fell out.

“I’m sorry.”

Ryan froze in the act of pulling his arm back and Michael could feel the stare on the top of his head, even though he was very determinedly not looking up from the blanket.  “What?”

The words came easier the next time, even though they felt like they caught on something in his throat as he was forcing them out, “I’m sorry.”

“What on earth are you _sorry_ for?”

Christ, was Ryan really going to make him spell it out?

Clutching the blanket tight enough that it bunched up around his fingers, Michael forced himself to keep talking. “For _punching_ you, dipshit. And, you know, what I said before that. And the trying to break your foot. Just for being a douchebag in general, it’s a blanket apology, _okay_?”

“What? No, _not_ okay.” Fuck.

Ryan put the laptop on the low table between the couch and the TV, before turning to face Michael completely on the couch. Determinedly not looking his way, Michael focused on the computer instead. It was on some kind of shopping website for computer parts. Heh, Ryan the PC guy. God he never would have been able to see that before, even with his old glasses.

“Michael.” _Fuuuuck_ , Ryan’s voice was all serious now, not careful at all. “Michael, look at me.”

Swallowing, Michael did force his eyes up and- well, Ryan didn’t _look_ mad. Intense, maybe. Determined. But not actually _mad_.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Ryan insisted. “You didn’t have any reason to believe I was who I said. If I was lying, getting away from me would have been the most important thing for you to do, how _ever_ you had to do it. _I_ was the fuck-up here, you’ve got to play it safe and it was my job to make you feel safe and I didn’t. I didn’t even _think_. If I saw anyone grab Ray or Gav like that, I’d break their fingers. You didn’t do _anything_ wrong, alright?”

It was one thing for Ryan to _say_ all that, but even in the shadows the bruise on his jaw was still easy to see. “But I-”

“ _I’m_ the one who should be sorry, Michael.” Ryan continued, fisting his hands in the sweatpants covering his knees. “And I am. I am _so_ sorry. I _knew_ you didn’t like to be touched an-”

“It’s not- it isn’t…” Oh fuck, he couldn’t say that, couldn’t say he actually did like it, that was all kinds of wrong. _And_ it was fucking dangerous. “It isn’t _that_. It’s… I didn’t mean to attack you.” He curled a little more tightly around the blanket, eyes flicking back down. “I didn’t think about it, it wasn’t on purpose. It just fucking happened, I didn’t _mean_ to.”

“Michael,” Ryan’s voice had gone soft again. “That’s not bad either. That’s a reflex, like holding your breath when you fall into water. It’s supposed to protect you.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” was Michael’s response to that, and he felt a little breathless all of a sudden, his finger clutching so tightly at the blanket they were almost cramping and oooohh no. He was starting to feel like he had with Jack in the hotel room, shaky and raw, he needed to pull it together. Or just hurry and get this conversation over with, that would work too. “And what the fuck is going to protect you all from me when that happens by accident? I can’t- I can’t hurt you, you can’t walk around worried about what I’m going to do-”

Ryan shifted a little closer and Michael’s words died in his throat. “We’re not scared of you, Michael.”

“You fucking should be, have you not been fucking paying attention? I cannot fucking control myself, I am a goddamn danger to the people you _love_. You _know_ that, _they_ know that, even Gavin’s been fucking keeping his distance.” The last words scraped roughly up his throat like he’d swallowed a pine cone, or maybe a cheese grater.

If Ryan understood that, if Michael could _make_ him understand, that would be best. He’d be tossed out on his ass, for very good reason, but it would absolutely be best, especially since he couldn’t seem to force himself to leave on his own because he was a selfish goddamn coward.

“The people I love _want you here_.” Michael’s breath died in his throat as Ryan dipped his head to try and catch his eye. “We _all_ want you here. The only thing we were worried about was that you’d be scared of _us_.”

“What?” Michael did look up at that, it was too absurd not to check and see if Ryan was joking. “Why the fuck would I be scared of _you_? I know you’re not fucking lying to me now.”

Ryan’s face did the same soft thing Gavin’s had when Michael mentioned his slow mo videos. It didn’t last as long on Ryan, but it was absolutely the same expression. Lips twitching in a small smile, he continued. “I’m glad to hear that. And…” he hesitated for a second before making eye contact. After a moment, an odd sort of determination worked its way into his voice. “I’m thinking they were keeping their distance to avoid making you uncomfortable, but I’m sure if I told them they didn’t have to worry about it, they’d be glad you weren’t afraid. I won’t tell them if you don’t want me to, but if you want to work on that reflex, that’s probably the best way to do it.”

Was… was that… Michael wasn’t sure what it was. Good? Bad?

“What if it happens again?” he asked quietly. “What if I hurt someone?”

“They’re not going to sneak up behind you in a dark hallway,” Ryan said dismissively. “And they’re not going to be douchebags that grab you like I did. But no one will be mad if an accident happens, okay?”

Rearing back, Michael shook his head, “ _No_ , don't you  _get it_?! An accident like that shouldn't be able to  _happen_ , I shouldn’t even fucking _be_ here, it’s not _safe-_ ”

Fingers dove through his hair, tangling in the curls as a warm palm pressed down to match the curve of his skull and he froze. Wide-eyed, not even quite sure he was breathing, never mind capable of finishing his fucking thought, he went stark still, couldn't focus on anything but the firm, confident touch. There wasn’t any hesitance or fear in it, not _any_.

“See?” Ryan asked, ducking his head to catch Michael’s eyes again. His face wasn’t scared at all, he was… calm. If anything he looked _happy_. “You didn’t hurt me. You’re fine.”

“That- that’s not-” Michael choked a little as blunt nails scratched lightly at his scalp before calloused fingers smoothed over the same spot and he _completely_ forgot what words were supposed to come next in that sentence, let alone what point he was trying to make.

Ryan just kept moving his hand in some deliberate way that Michael was almost certain was calculated to keep him from remembering how to fucking speak. It was different from Gavin in the store, that had been casual, light and easy. This wasn’t a casual gesture at all, this was loaded, this was Ryan trying to accomplish something and Michael didn’t have a damn clue what it was, but the chills flowing across his skin had fuck all to do with the cold now.

“I know not every touch is the same, don’t get me wrong,” Ryan continued, running his nails from Michael’s hairline all the way down to the base of his skull because he was a _son of a bitch_. “But we don’t want you to have to live without the good ones because there’s some bad ones. So if we do something that feels wrong, even if you don’t know why, tell us. You know how tactile Gavin is, even though you haven’t known him long. He’ll find ways to work around it, we all will. There might be a few bumps at first, but this way, everyone’s happy and no one has to be scared. Sound fair?”

Ryan’s fingers should be outlawed. Michael couldn’t think and it wasn’t just because he wasn’t used to the contact, it was because it felt _really fucking good_. An alarm bell in the distant recesses of his mind told him he should feel guilty about enjoying it so much, but he could barely hear it as he automatically tipped his head forward so Ryan could get a better angle.

“S-sure,” he managed, limp fingers twitching in the mauled fabric of the blanket in his lap. Honestly, he was impressed he managed speech at all.

Humming in a satisfied sort of way, Ryan kept moving his fingers through Michael’s hair, which was a little awkward only because it was so long. “Thanks for giving us a second chance. We’ll figure it all out together, okay?”

Ryan could have said anything at all right then and Michael’s answer still would have been, “I guess.”

He swore he could _hear_ Ryan’s smirk as the older man smoothed his fingers through Michael’s hair one last time before pulling back and settling into the couch, not as far away as before. Drawing his laptop back into his lap, he gave Michael a little smile before going back to what he was working on.

And Michael… Michael finally unfolded the blanket and did his level best to hide in it without looking like he was hiding in it.

He’d just agreed to stay.

He’d (under duress and _deliberate manipulation,_ if anyone was wondering) said it was okay to  _let the guys touch him_.

He’d actually done that.

And… the buzzing energy telling him to pack up and run wasn’t overpowering anymore. It was still _there_ , just pushed back. It was something he could ignore, now.

It was goddamn stupid, but he couldn’t think that with the same ferocity he used to be able to. Ryan was finally happy, the last of the tension gone from his face and shoulders. The idea of dealing with Michael’s crazy, of being _allowed_ to deal with it, had made him happy. And he said the others would be happy too.

They were fucking idiots, but Michael knew that, had known that, and there was only so much he could force himself to do.

He wasn’t a strong enough person to pull himself away from this, no matter how much he definitely should. He was going to stay there, with the soft blankets and the crazy people with no self-preservation. At the very least, he was going to try his hardest.

And if he was going to do that, he was going to make damn sure he didn’t hurt anyone in the process.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, updates might slow down a bit from here on out because A-this is as far as I've planned the story in detail, I have a rough outline for the rest but I'll be figuring it out as I go, B-I'm going to try and pick up a second job soon, C-I have to fucking sleep sometime. I'll try and not let it slow me down too much!
> 
> But WOW, you guys really liked the last chapter! I can tell you for sure that it was as fun for me to write it, lol. This chapter's more of a normal length, but objectively not bad. Also, if I titled chapters, this one would be called 'two steps forward and one step back'
> 
> I mean-what?

As it turned out, infomercials did have a weirdly hypnotic effect, if you let them, and Michael found himself dozing in and out and only noticing the difference because the product on display had moved from some sort of fifteen-in-one kitchen appliance to genetically altered grass.

It was the grass thing that woke him up, that was a little too weird to just ignore, even for an infomercial.

The sleep stupidity wasn’t there this time, thank fuck, he hadn’t gone deep enough into sleep for that. So he wasn’t as disoriented as he might have been, but he did have a killer crick in his neck because why the fuck not.

A faint blue glow in the hallway said dawn was approaching, so he forced himself into a full sitting position and glanced over-

Ryan was asleep.

Laptop still under his hands, he was dead to the world, head partly resting on his shoulder and moving in time with the soft, regular breaths Michael could almost hear.

Carefully, he slipped off the couch, dropping the blanket over the arm, and pulled Ryan’s laptop out from under his fingers. He had to be painstakingly slow to make sure he didn’t wake him up, he’d said he had insomnia, didn’t sleep much, the _last_ thing Michael wanted to do was wake him up.

Closing the laptop, he set it silently on the coffee table, then picked the blanket back up and draped it as well as he could over Ryan. It wasn’t long enough to cover him, but he was wearing sweat pants and socks, so Michael just focused on making sure his arms didn’t get cold and called it good.

Only after that did he slip past the coffee table and grope around the edge of the TV until he found the power button. Pressing it immediately plunged the room into pitch fucking darkness, but the barely-there light in the hall was enough for him to avoid slamming against the table as he made his way back out and painstakingly pulled the door shut behind him.

Letting out a slow breath, he stepped back, tension slumping out of his shoulders. He was pretty sure he hadn’t woken Ryan up. Good. He’d looked like he needed the sleep.

Movingly stiffly, because being curled into a tight ball for hours did not do good things for his bruises, he slipped back through the silent house to the guest room.

His plan the day before had been to shower before anyone else got up and needed the hot water and it was the same thing today, except it was pre-dawn instead of almost-as-stupid early.

And, well. On some level, it might also be about trying to make his decision settle. It had already _stuck_ , but getting it to settle was a whole other ball game. And going through the… _his_ new stuff might help that, some.

There were two entire sacks filled with the little travel bottles of shampoo and conditioner that Gavin had gathered for him to try. He picked a matching set at random and started rifling around for the soap and other stuff that had to be in there somewhere when he came across the scissors.

They were just normal scissors, in the plastic and cardboard packaging, but they immediately made him think of the conversation he’d had with Jack. It felt really wasteful for Jack to have gotten a pair specifically for him, but maybe they didn’t want to use their scissors for something like that, so it made some sense, at least.

Touching a hand to the ends of the curls brushing his neck, he stared at the scissors and sat back on his heels.

How in the _fuck_ was he going to do this without making a huge mess?

 

* * *

  

Cut hair was _way_ easier to clean up when it was wet, it turned out.

He dumped the last of it into one of the sacks and tied it off, before dumping that into another sack and doing the same. He’d find out where to throw it out later.

The shower remained one of the most amazing things on the planet, but he probably wasn’t going to use that particular shampoo again because fucking _Christ_ was the smell strong. The bottle proclaimed it was aloe something or other and he was definitely not a fan.

It _had_ made his hair easier to cut, though.

The itch of it around his ears was new, but it’d go away. He couldn’t stop scuffing his hands through it, though. It was still long enough to curl, long enough to run his fingers through, but at least he didn’t look like he had a mop on top of his head anymore.

He’d gotten okay at cutting his hair, over the years.

The person in the mirror looked like slightly less of a wreck, now. Hair cut, black eye almost entirely faded, he could almost pretend he looked like a real person. It was weird, but kind of a… light feeling.

After tossing his new towel over the shower door to dry, he wandered out into the room and crouched by the closet door, rummaging around in the bags to see what exactly had been sneak-purchased for him in the way of clothes.

He got as far as pulling on a new pair of boxers before there was a knock at the door.

“Oh, shit, just a second!” he called. Finding something new to change into would take too fucking long, so he just snatched up the clothes Ryan had lent him off the bed where he’d put them before the shower and tugged them on. His sore muscles twinged in protest, but they were easy to ignore. “Uh, come in!”

The door creaked open and Geoff came in. “Hey. Future reference-” he tapped the inside of the knob, “you’ve got a lock.”

… he hadn’t even _thought_ to check the bedroom door for a lock. Most of the locks he encountered were broken or otherwise useless because no one would have issue with breaking the door down or picking the lock. That it actually meant something here was amazing in so many different way that he carefully kept off his face because the prospect of being able to lock people out at will was probably not something normal people had to worry about.

“Good to know,” he said, trying to sound casual and failing, by the knowing look he received.

Nodding his head at Michael’s right side, Geoff continued. “Can I see your arm? I wanna make sure it’s healing okay.”

Ryan must have talked to him. Geoff had this sort of… anticipation in his eyes. Like he was waiting to see what Michael would do.

Not a tough choice. Not with Geoff.

He held his arm out and Geoff immediately stepped forward to gently grip his wrist with one hand and his elbow with the other, so he could tilt the limb into the light from the window. It still looked fine to Michael, the butterfly stitches were even starting to peel up at the edges.

“It’s not bad, actually,” Geoff’s voice had the slightest hint of surprise.

“Dude. Even _I_ know there’s some shit you can’t skimp on.”

Geoff shrugged. “Yeah, yeah, point taken. This isn’t _bad_ , but that inflammation isn’t great either.”

Frowning, Michael looked again, “It’s just a little red.”

“Yeah,” Geoff carefully ran a finger along the red skin and Michael did _not_ react in any way. “But the skin’s hot. Not a full-blown infection, but not fucking great. You’re gonna have one hell of a scar, but you’re fine. You should take a Tylenol or something to get the inflammation under control, though.”

Shrugging, Michael lifted his arm, a little relieved when Geoff let it go immediately. He liked the guy, but something about being held onto like that so long was making his insides squirm. “Whatever.”

There was a light in Geoff’s eyes. Some emotion Michael couldn’t place. Good… but not excited or happy or amused… just different. “Alright, I’ll grab that. Digging the hair, by the way.”

Automatically, Michael reached up to touch the curls again. “Yeah, it was getting kind of long, so-”

Geoff’s arm flashed out and Michael flinched back, but didn’t attack or anything when Geoff’s hand clamped around his wrist again- a little harder this time. Not painful, but enough of a change in attitude to set Michael’s heart racing. And not in a good way.

“Sorry,” Geoff said, lowering both his hand and Michael’s arm and loosening his grip, but not letting go. “Sorry, I just-”

The good light was gone from his eyes and his forehead was crinkling and the stress was back and no, no, _no_ it was _good_ , what happened, what had Michael done to ruin it?

Licking his lips nervously, Geoff stepped a little closer, pulling Michael’s arm out, away from his body, so he could reach out and push the right sleeve of the over-large shirt up to Michael’s shoulder.

The sound that came out of Geoff then, a broken, pained kind of breath, made Michael realize what had happened.

He’d lifted his right arm when he touched his hair and the too-big sleeve had slid down toward his shoulder.

And Geoff had gotten an eyeful of that awful bruise from the dumpster. The huge, dark one that made it look like Michael should at the very least have a broken bone.

The floor could have dropped out under Michael in that moment and he’d have felt more grounded.

No. _NO_.

It had been going good, so good, he’d talked to Ryan, things were better, Geoff had been happy. But now he looked upset and he still hadn’t let go of Michael’s arm and the fingers of his other hand were hovering over the bruise, like he wanted to check if it was real, but was scared to touch.

Geoff visibly swallowed, tried to rally himself, and stated, in a voice that was mostly steady, “This wasn’t here last week.”

Michael opened his mouth, closed it, unsure what to say. Looking at Geoff was painful, so he looked over Geoff’s right shoulder instead and said nothing.

“You got into _another_ fight?” Geoff’s voice was tight, but he rightly took Michael’s silence as confirmation. “ _Fuck_ , dude. What else, _where else_ are you hurt?”

“It’s-” Michael tried, but the words caught in his throat. “I’m fine.”

“ _Michael_.”

God fucking dammit. But Geoff knew already, Geoff could tell. If Michael didn’t tell him, he’d assume it was worse than it was and he’d worry and it’d look like Michael still didn’t trust him at all and that wasn’t true, he _did_ , but…

He hated that look on Geoff’s face and this was only going to make it worse.

On the other hand. The last time this had happened, he’d fucked it up. This was a chance for him to make up for that.

Swallowing once, twice, Michael lifted his arm out of Geoff’s hands a second time and fisted both hands in the hem of the shirt Ryan had given him. Before he could change his mind, he pulled it up, arms crossed like he was going to take it off. He stopped when he had it bunched up under his arms and-

And Geoff didn’t look like he was breathing.

Geoff looked _wrecked_ , fuck, this was a terrible idea. “Fucking shit, dude. Gavin basically _tackled_ you, why didn’t you _say_ something? It hurt like hell when he grabbed you like that, didn’t it?” He stretched out both hands, exactly like he had earlier, when it was just Michael’s arm. Fingers twitching, it took obvious effort for him to curl them into fists and pull himself back and- oh.

No matter what Ryan had told him, Geoff had seen Michael flinch when he moved too fast, had to remember the last time he’d reached out to touch.

Michael had to keep pushing. Make sure Geoff knew- knew Michael didn’t distrust him, didn’t think he was a liar or a threat. Because for some reason that was important to him and, well. It would make him feel better. To know he didn’t have to worry about Michael freaking out on him anymore.

Now all _Michael_ had to do was not freak out.

Swallowing, clenching his fists tighter in the fabric of his shirt, Michael forced the words out. “It- it’s fine. The ribs still hurt like a motherfucker, so. It’d be good to know.”

Geoff’s eyes finally flicked back up towards his, laser focused, like he was trying to break Michael’s expression down to make sure he was really okay with it.

And then he was stepping close- too close, under Michael’s guard, he could do anything and Michael couldn’t stop him-

And he was still staring, watching as Michael’s breath hitched and pausing until it evened out, eyes never leaving his face, even when his hands finally landed on his skin.

Michael couldn’t truthfully say he was okay with it. He jumped at the first brush of skin on skin, but forced himself not to jump _away_. Geoff’s hands were cool against his shower-heated skin- not in a bad way, more like a water-on-a-hot-day way. And his touch was firm enough that it didn’t tickle or creep Michael out, but light enough that it didn’t hurt any more than it had to as he systematically slid his hands over Michael’s ribs.

But at the same time, it wasn’t like with Ryan, wasn’t nice like that. It was too close, too easy for Geoff to do anything he wanted, too impersonal and too intimate at the same time. He was clearly trying not to be weird, everything clinical, but the skin was sensitive from bruising and having not seen the light of day or been touched ever in memory and the feeling, the knowledge that someone else was touching him, it was making his skin crawl in a way that sort of made him want to be sick again.

And then Geoff pulled away and Michael gratefully dropped the shirt back into place, resisting the urge to run his hands down his sides, make sure he was still in one piece.

“Nothing feels broken,” Geoff said, sort of soft and was it _that_ obvious Michael was freaking out a little? “But if it gets worse or doesn’t go away, you better fucking _tell me_.”

Unable to really come up with a coherent answer to that, Michael just nodded sharply and gripped the hem of his shirt again.

“I’ll go grab you those painkillers. Jack and Ryan are in the kitchen if you want to grab some breakfast, but Gavin and Ray aren’t up yet.” When Michael just nodded again, Geoff gave a smile that didn’t really look like a smile, turned, and left, closing the door softly behind him.

The sensation of foreign hands on him wasn’t going away. It made him want to take another shower, to scrub at his skin, scratch it off, anything to get rid of that lingering feeling skittering up and down his sides.

But there was a lock on his door. It shouldn’t have made him feel so much better to click it into place but it did.

For a second he just stood in the center of the room. Then he heaved a shuddering breath and pulled the shirt off, throwing it with more force than he meant to toward the bed, shortly followed by the pants.

Going toward the closet, his intent was to continue rummaging through them trying to find something to wear, but, in the end, all he did was step inside and shut the door behind him.

Dark, quiet, enclosed. It was nice. Helped him breathe better. But he was not going to fucking examine why that was right now.

Well. At least his damn ribs weren’t broken, on top of everything else.

In a second, he’d open the door, switch the light on, and actually find some goddamn clothes to wear. He’d open the door when Geoff came back, take the painkillers, and go out to where Ryan and Jack were in the kitchen and pretend to be a functional human being around maybe the three people with the most proof that wasn’t true.

But, until he had to do that, he could stay where he was, crouched in the far corner of a dark closet surrounded by more things than he ever thought he’d own at once.

And he could focus on breathing.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW this is late and I am sorry! Getting this chapter out was like pulling teeth, it was the worst, and there's almost definitely typos because I finished writing it three minutes ago, but I am very tired myself and I am going to sleep. The next chapter will be better, I actually have that one planned out, some. Thank you all for being patient, you are lovely! <3 <3 <3

The amount of dread pooling in Michael’s stomach like molten lead would have been significantly more appropriate if he was facing a noose. Or maybe a firing squad.

“It’s totally cool if you can’t remember all that much,” Burnie was saying, tapping away at his phone further down the table. “We can work with whatever you’ve got. More info just makes it a little easier, that’s all.”

“Right,” Michael said, trying to sound confident and probably failing. He picked up the pen in front of him, uncapped it, and just sort of… sat there.

Governmental paperwork, while not something he’d ever had to really deal with, was something he spontaneously hated on sight. Burnie’d shown up right after lunch with a folder under one arm and commandeered the kitchen table and Michael’s attention, which Gavin had loudly protested.

Apparently, getting legally hired required a staggering amount of things. Why the actual _fuck_ did they need a copy of his birth certificate? And he had a better chance of being declared king than he did of remembering his social security number. He wasn’t sure he’d ever actually _heard_ the damn thing. He couldn’t even remember his CPS _case number_ , for fuck’s sake.

Burnie had said that he would take care of getting it all, of submitting all the paperwork and request forms and everything, but he needed as much info as Michael could give him to make it less of a headache. And the guy was basically bending over backwards to handle all the legal stuff so Michael didn’t have to puzzle it out, he was a goddamn saint, so Michael _really_ wanted to make it easier.

Which was why he was sitting there, dragging the pen carefully over the paper with the aid of incredibly rusty muscle memory, and trying desperately to remember his middle name.

He knew he _had_ a middle name. It was in the back of his mind, on the tip of his tongue. When he thought his full name, there was a beat, a sort of muffled idea of sound, that went between his first and last. _Michael Jones, Michael Jones…_ Michael _what_ Jones?

As far as names went, you couldn’t get much more generic than Michael Jones unless you were John Smith. Having his middle name would help a lot, but for the _life_ of him, he couldn’t force that impression into sounds.

The jaw-popping yawns that he had to keep smothering weren’t helping. He’d been well on his way to passing out on the couch while listening to Gavin ramble when Burnie had shown up, and he was glad to have been interrupted. Falling asleep in a room full of people was not something that would have been good.

But, god, it felt like his head was stuffed with cotton and mist. Sleep stupidity wasn’t exclusive to waking up, apparently, it could hit if your body decided you were tired enough.

Which, also, fucking idiotic, he’d gone _way_ longer without sleep before and been fine, he even sort of dozed off last night, where the fuck did his body get off with the exhaustion thing?

The clothes probably didn’t help. Gavin had bought them all a size too big and Michael had gone with a shirt made out of the same sort of soft material as the green one Geoff had first given him and some pajama pants, since he wasn’t going anywhere even if the house caught fire, and he might as well have been wearing a blanket. He was pretty sure he could lay down in gravel and have a really fucking nice nap, if the opportunity presented itself.

Some of the stuff was easy, things that had been burned into his brain from the second he was old enough to understand speech. His birthday, his parents’ and brothers’ names. The address of the house he grew up in.

But what the _fuck_ was his middle name?

A familiar smell hit his nose, which was the only thing that saved Gavin from an elbow to the face a second later, when he draped his arms over Michael’s shoulders. He’d worn that fucking jacket for hours, it was hard not to recognize the scent, even with Gavin’s chin digging into the top of his head.

“Michaeellll…” Gavin whined, “what’s all this?”

“It’s fucking paperwork, what does it look like?” He’d been agitatedly tapping the tip of the pen against the paper, making a collection of tiny ink dots next to the blank space over the line for his middle name, and he forced his hand to still.

This was one of the moments Gavin chose to suddenly be observant. “Oh, have you got a middle name, Michael?”

Great.

Ignoring the way Burnie glanced up from his phone, Michael huffed out a breath through his nose. “Yeah, but I can’t fucking remember it.”

Thankfully, Gavin didn’t make a huge deal, just dropped into the chair to Michael’s right. “Aww, bad luck. Can’t even remember what it starts with?”

That… was…

Frowning, Michael mentally ran through the alphabet, trying to fit letters with the tangled memory of what was supposed to be his name. Nothing really worked and he was getting more and more frustrated- until he got to the end.

“’V’,” he said, surprising himself. “It starts with a ‘V’.”

“Oh, top!” Gavin said, leaning closer. “There’s hardly any guy names starting with ‘V’, this’ll be easy! I can only think of one, reall-”

“Vincent.”

Michael’s heart lurched when he glanced up and saw Burnie staring at him, head tilted thoughtfully.

“Is that is? There’s more, but that’s the only one I can think of off the top of my head too.”

Michael Jones. Michael _Vincent_ Jones.

It sounded _right_. It _fit_.

“Yeah,” he said, through an incredibly fucking dry throat, as he forced his hand to form the letters on the page, “yeah, that’s right.”

Gavin snorted, then grinned when Michael shot him a look. “You sound like a bloody comic book character, mate.”

The squawking noise Gavin made when he got a line of blue ink down his cheek was really something Michael wished he could record, it was fucking hilarious.

Burnie laughed, of course. “It’s a badass name, though.”

Shrugging, Michael said, “Whatever”, but there was a stupid, proud feeling in his chest that wasn’t going away.

He was getting really fucking complacent here, he shouldn’t be that happy just because someone _said_ something. It was stupid. Fucking childish.

“You got everything?” Burnie asked, when he put down the pen.

Scoffing, Michael pushed the papers toward the man. “Not even close, but I don’t have a clue about the rest of this shit.”

“Hey, good enough for me.” Burnie tapped the pages a few times against the table before sliding them back into the folder. “This should help plenty, thanks.”

Burnie shouldn’t be _thanking_ him, it should be the other way around, but ‘thanks’ didn’t even come close to being enough. Not for flying to Jersey to get him, bringing him back, giving him another chance at a situation he never could have dreamed up, and then going on to take care of all the aspects of being a real person that were so far beyond his understanding that he wouldn’t have even known where to start.

So he just shrugged, because he was a fucking idiot.

“I’m hoping to get everything sent out this week, but I have no idea how long it’ll take to hear back, this _is_ the government. But I’ll definitely let you know as soon as I know anything, okay?”

“Sounds good,” Michael forced out, trying to sound nonchalant.

Burnie frowned to himself, then looked over at Gavin. “Hey, you taken him to get a phone yet?”

Michael’s whole body went cold, but Gavin just pouted. “Nah, Jack wouldn’t let me. Said we had to keep it to _essentials_ first.”

Burnie sighed. “I get that, but phones _are_ essential, this day and age. Here,” he pulled out his wallet, took out a card, then looked at Gavin’s face, “… on second thought, I’m giving this to Ryan.”

“What? No, he’ll get him a Samsung or something! You know he needs an iPhone, c’mon!”

“I don’t need anything!” Michael clenched the pen in his fist again, feeling the cheap plastic dig into the insides of his fingers. “Seriously, I’m _fine_.”

“It’s a company card,” Burnie said easily, like that was all the explanation that was needed. “It helps us to be able to reach you and it makes everything easier on everyone when you can actually fucking reach your coworkers. Seriously, it’s not putting anybody out.”

That-

“It’s still a _lot_ ,” Michael ground out. “I _know_ the going rate for new iPhones.” He didn’t want to explain that he knew that because pickpocketing any of the latest iPhones was like hitting the jackpot when it came to pawning stuff, but the look on Burnie’s face said he knew anyway.

“Not compared to the pain in the ass it’ll be if you _don’t_ have a phone when we start needing to organize stuff. This is just as much for us as it is for you, buddy.”

“Right!” Gavin said with a grin. “I’ll help you get it set up alright, it’ll be brilliant, you’ll see.”

“That’s not-”

Burnie passed the card over to Gavin, who grinned, snatched it, and darted off, calling for Geoff. The glare Michael sent Burnie did not seem to register with the other man at all.

“ _Burnie-_ ”

“This one’s on us,” Burnie settled back into his chair, a ghost of a smile and a patient look taking up residence on his face. “If you want to get another one later, you can handle it. It just makes more sense for us to do it right now, especially since we made you move halfway across the country. We buy shit for work all the time, all these guys have computers and game consoles specifically for the office.”

That amount of money was just mindboggling. It felt like someone had put his brain in a fucking blender- everything was disconnected parts barely held together. The fact that something like a brand new phone wasn’t even something to give serious thought to, just the swipe of a card, that- he just-

He set down the pen, happy he hadn’t broken it, and went to find Jack. Jack had said he’d explain the general process Achievement Hunter went through to make and schedule videos- not that they really kept to it all that often, but they had regular stuff they tried for.

It’d be way easier to think on that than it would Burnie’s face and his very cavalier attitude toward spending fucking ungodly amount of money on Michael.

 

* * *

 

Looking up from the cloth he was using to dry his hands, Michael gave Geoff a blank stare. “What?”

He’d managed to get the guys to let him do the dishes after dinner, which was a drop in the fucking bucket compared to what they’d done for him (even though he'd managed to escape the phone thing for the moment, as Gavin couldn't drive and Geoff had been off somewhere with Ryan and the whole thing had slipped Gavin's mind by the time he got back), but it made him feel better. But when he’d packed everything away in the dishwasher, pressing the button Ryan had showed him, and started drying off his hands, Geoff had come over and leaned against the counter to talk.

“We’re going to have to head back to work in the morning,” Geoff repeated. “So you’ll have the run of the place. Just wanted to make sure you knew you’re welcome to anything you find- this is your home too now. Still might want to steer clear of the basement, though, it’s fucking creepy down there.”

Swallowing hard and actively ignoring that nonsense about this being his home, he asked, “There’s a basement?”

“No one told you? That little door across the hall and to the right of your room? We mostly just keep the shit we’re too lazy to unpack down there, plus it’s unfinished. I mean, you can look around if you want, but that’s some horror movie shit down there.”

“Right,” Michael said calmly, folding the rag and putting it aside and not really thinking about much. They were leaving him alone. In their house. With no security measures in place whatsoever. He could rob them blind and be three states over before they knew. Were they stupid or did they see something he didn’t?

He tried to think of something more to say, but his brain hit up against a wall. He wasn’t sure where to go from there and he couldn’t quite focus.

Yawning into the back of his wrist drew Geoff’s attention, of fucking course. “Didn’t get enough sleep, did you?”

Michael wasn’t convinced he’d gotten _any_ really sleep, actually. “It’s fine, I’m used to it.”

“Yeah, not a huge confidence booster, dude.” Geoff reached out and nudged his shoulder. It was a slow gesture, like he was actively remembering Michael’s bruises and trying to work around them. “If you need to sleep, go to sleep.”

“I’m fine, Ray was going to show me-”

“It’ll be there _tomorrow_ and Ray wouldn’t want you falling asleep in the middle of whatever.”

Hesitating was Michael’s fatal mistake, there. Because that _wouldn’t_ be good, would it? He needed to be able to pay attention, right? Not being awake for it would make Ray think he didn’t care.

Geoff nodded toward the hall. “Go on. I’ll explain to Ray. You’re dead on your fucking feet.”

Michael couldn’t really argue with that. He _was_ incredibly fucking tired, but, “When are you guys leaving in the morning?”

“Me and Ryan will probably head up around eight, but Jack might not bring Gav or Ray until nine or ten, depending. You going to sleep or not?”

Rolling his eyes pointedly, Michael stepped away from the counter and headed toward the guest room. He wasn’t _really_ upset about it, god knew he was fucking tired. It was just stupid, was all. This level of exhaustion was pathetic as hell, compared to what he usually did. He’d been living the cushy life for the last few days, he _shouldn’t_ be dead on his feet.

And yet.

Part of him wanted to cut to the chase and just crawl back under the bed. But he’d locked the door, so that was fine. And he did need to get to where he was sleeping in the bed, he couldn’t sleep on the fucking ground forever, they’d find out at some point and he did _not_ want to deal with the _looks_.

He left the blanket under the bed, he’d probably need it there at some point, but he grabbed the pillow, flung it against the headboard, and lied down.

If he’d thought about it, he’d have predicted he’d stare at the ceiling for a few hours, or maybe keep feeling too much like he was falling to sleep.

But instead he pulled the heavy blankets up to his shoulders and let his head sink into the pillow and immediately felt his muscles starting to relax. It was like that first night at the hotel, when it had taken everything he’d had to stay awake long enough to hear whether Gavin and Ray were okay with him being there.

He shouldn’t have been _that_ tired. But he was half asleep before he even closed his eyes.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *kicks down door* I LIVE
> 
> GOD I am so sorry this chapter took forever, I've started doing freelance work on top of my full time job and oh my gooooooood
> 
> Plus, we're currently slogging through the 'set-up' part of the plot, where the character development is mostly internal and the staging is subtle. Getting through that is SUPER boring for me, but takes a lot of work to get precisely right and make entertaining enough to be worth reading. We're getting there, though! We will return to drama soon, my friends!!

“You look like crap, mate.”

Faced with a choice between using his limited energy to glare at Gavin or using it to start inhaling the steaming eggs on the plate in front of him, Michael had to go with the latter option, though the former was tempting.

He did flip Gavin off with the hand that wasn’t holding a fork, though.

Ray snorted and kicked lightly at Michael’s ankle from the next stool over- scuffed shoe brushing gently against Michael’s sock-clad foot. “Don’t worry about it, man. Gav’s an acquired taste.”

Shooting Ray a small smile and ignoring Gavin’s indignant ‘Oi!’, Michael went back to his food.

He hadn’t really _wanted_ to get out of bed, but he’d heard everyone moving around and smelled food and, well, he’d hardly turn that down. It wasn’t that he felt _sick_ , it was more that he felt he should still be asleep, despite the fact he’d gotten like ten hours last night, which was fucking insane and he _definitely_ didn’t need more than that.

But he was fine. Didn’t feel sick, not yet, anyway. That could change on a dime, these days. Still, no reason to get the guys worked up over nothing.

“’M fine,” he said, before biting into a strip of bacon and resisting the urge to let his eyes roll up into his head. Fucking hell, there was something to be said for food actually cooked in a kitchen.

Jack swung past and dropped a glass of orange juice by his plate and he almost laughed. Eggs, bacon, toast, orange juice, it was fucking picturesque, like those ‘balanced breakfast’s on cereal commercials. It did very little to make the fake feeling of this place in go away.

Instead, he drank his orange juice. Unlike most he’d had in recent memory, it didn’t taste like battery acid.

“I know what you need!” Gavin declared, like he’d solved a mystery. Making a beeline for the fridge, he reached immediately for one of the lower shelves and came back holding a skinny blue and silver can, which he plonked in front of Michael with an air of satisfaction.

Raising his eyebrows at it, Michael glanced up. “Red Bull?” He’d seen the stuff before, in stores and weird ads. Knew it was an energy drink, but that was about it.

“Oh God, no,” Jack protested, leaning against the other side of the bar. “The last thing we need is someone else getting hooked on that shit.”

“Well yeah, it _tastes_ like piss, but it’s great for energy,” Gavin insisted. “C’mon, try it, Michael!”

Faced with both Gavin’s eager face and Jack’s insistent throat-slashing gestures, Michael settled on holding the can up to Ray. “Yes or no?”

Ray shook his head, “Oh no. I’m not taking responsibility for that, man.”

Shrugging, Michael pulled the tab, took a sip, and choked on it.

“The _fuck_?” He coughed. “Is that _actually_ piss?”

“It’s a- a what did you call it?- an acquired taste, right!”

Michael scowled, but took another drink because, shit, he wasn’t going to _throw it out_. “It’s fucking gross, dude.”

Huffing, Gavin waved a dismissive hand. “You’ll see what I mean in a minute!”

“Unfortunately, we don’t actually have a minute, we need to head out,” Jack interjected. “We’ve got a couple of group videos to record today and Geoff’s gonna bitch if we don’t get there soon.”

“Geoff always bitches,” Ray countered, but he was already hopping down from his stool and swiping Gavin’s empty plate to stack on top of his and dump in the sink.

For his part, Gavin was… staring at Michael from where he was resting his chin on his folded arms, what the _fuck_. “Don’t like leaving you without a phone, mate. Got no landline, what if you need us?”

Jack spoke up, which was good because Michael kind of felt like he’d been punched in the gut. “It’s one day, Gav. We’ll pick one up on the way back, it’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” Michael agreed, once he’d found his breath. “I’m not planning on setting any fucking fires.”

Gavin’s lips pressed into a thin line, knee jittering a little before he hopped to his feet, looking a little agitated, like he was frustrated he hadn’t come up with some kind of answer. “We’ll go right after work, yeah?”

It probably wasn’t worth it to point out that, up until four days ago, he’d been living in infinitely more dangerous conditions, by himself, for the better part of a decade, and he’d managed to survive just fine. That would probably make Gav- well, it’d probably make _Gavin_ roll his eyes, because Gavin didn’t quite seem to take that stuff seriously, and thank fuck for that. But it’d make Jack have that sad look again and god knew how Ray’d react.

Nope, not worth it.

A few more minutes and a round of goodbyes later, Michael found himself sitting in the kitchen, ears straining to listen for the sound of the garage door going down, even though he knew by now that it was way too quiet for that.

 _Everything_ was way too quiet, all of a sudden. That silence again, that oppressive, void of a silence. He hated it. How did people live surrounded by this? It didn’t even feel like he was part of the world anymore, just trapped in a little bubble of quiet no one could get in-

The Red Bull can made a noise of protest when his grip got too tight and, fed up, he just chugged the thing. He wasn’t going to waste it, but he still wanted it gone and to taste it as little as possible.

He was also never, ever going to understand the weird drawer thing by the sink that you pulled out to find the trash can. What the fuck, who built that into a house and made it look like a cabinet? Since fucking when did it become weird to have a trash can in the kitchen, why did people have to hide it, was the trash can a secret? Did they want people to think they were just so nice and pristine that trash wasn’t a thing in their lives?

The shaky inhale he pulled in was cold in his lungs and, okay, _maybe_ he needed to calm down, a little.

Cleaning the breakfast dishes helped. Broke that fucking silence, for one thing. For another, it was something he could do to help. Tiny as shit, but it was something. At least he could show he was doing _something_ , not just lying around their house eating their food and using all their hot water.

 _Speaking_ of which, now they were all gone, he didn’t have to worry about using all that up. He was definitely going to take advantage of that.

The Red Bull kicked in midway through washing the dishes and, yup, suddenly Gavin’s insistence about how well it worked made a _lot_ of fucking sense.

He went from slow and half asleep to leaking energy in the span of about a minute. On the one hand, having his exhaustion fall away was a relief. On the other, it sort of felt like his eyes were trying to go in six different directions at once.

When he’d put the dishes away and started the washer, he was standing in the middle of the kitchen with twitching fingers and the need to run.

But there were so many reason he couldn’t do that, so he tried to force it back. He’d wanted to run basically since he got there, the energy just made it worse, but he’d decided to stay, so he was going to at least give it a halfway decent shot.

He had to remind himself of that roughly every thirty damn seconds, but hopefully it’d get easier at some point.

Rummaging around in the cupboards until he found the one with glasses didn’t do a lot to ease the frantic energy under his skin- it felt almost like he was robbing the place, just the way he was opening and closing stuff quickly, looking for what he needed.

Tying everything back to a potential crime, this was fucking _swell_.

After finally finding a fucking glass, he filled it with ice and water from the fridge door (ice and clean water on demand, fuckers didn’t know how good they had it and he hoped to hell it would stay that way) until it was slick with condensation.

The cold was good. The wet was good. It made the buzzing under his skin more bearable if he could focus on those.

He just needed to calm down. This wasn’t forever. They said this building was his home too, but that was a joke. Well meaning, but still a joke. It was the home they’d bought for themselves, the five of them, specifically. It wasn’t meant to be his too. When he left, it would be a relief to have their space back.

The idea of having his own place at some point was hard to even envision. An apartment? That was _his_?

He couldn’t wrap his mind around it. But he was going to have to, at some point.

These guys wouldn’t put him up forever. Not that he wanted them to. God, if they kept going like they had been, he’d have cost them a million dollars by the end of the year. No, the last thing they needed was for him to get comfortable here.

Not that he was comfortable, in the oppressive silence of an empty house. He wasn’t even sure what he was meant to be doing, like, Geoff said he could help himself to anything, but no one really _meant_ that when they said it. They might think they did, but there was always something they wanted left alone and they wouldn’t think to mention it and maybe not even blame you if they saw you’d messed with it, but they’d still be upset and that just wasn’t worth it.

That reeaaally fucking limited his possible activities for the day.

 

* * *

 

“… chael… Hey Michael, rise and shine, buddy.”

That pleasant post-nap lethargy only lasted a split second before Michael realized someone was talking to him and tried to bolt upright so quickly that he nearly slipped off the couch.

“Whoa, hey! You’re good, you’re fine, sorry.” Geoff. It was Geoff, leaning over the back of the couch and looking down at him. “Looks like you had a tiring day.”

Blinking and adjusting his skewed glasses on his face, Michael looked around and, yeah, the light outside was fading and he could see Ryan pulling a diet coke out of the refrigerator and hear shuffles and light conversation from the hall that led to the bedrooms.

Which was really fucking weird because he’d fallen asleep before noon.

He hadn’t even meant to, he’d just absently sat on the couch while trying to think and it was long enough to stretch out and he knew it was fine because Gavin had done it and he was just going to be there until he figured out how he was going to spend the day.

Spending it unconscious had really not been one of the options.

Quickly sitting up, he desperately scrambled for an explanation. “I, um-”

“Michael!” Gavin threw himself onto the couch beside Michael with such enthusiasm that the furniture shook and their heads nearly cracked together. “Look!”

Gavin was holding a small white box in his hand. A small white box with a picture of a phone on it.

It was one thing for them to talk about buying him a phone and another ENTIRELY for him to find himself staring at the box that contained hundreds of dollars worth of technology that was meant to be his. “I-”

“Store didn’t have any of the new ones, sorry.” Thank fucking Christ. “They activated it, but nobody messed with it yet!”

The box, when Gavin shoved it into his hands, was smooth under his fingers. They didn’t want to close around the lid, but he was hyperaware of Gavin’s eyes on the side of his face, so he sucked in a breath, held it, and pulled the box open.

He was familiar with iPhones, if only from adventures in pickpocketing and pawning, but he still felt weird picking up the small rectangle. It felt more fragile in his hand than any other phone he’d picked up, and he found himself thinking back to all the phones he’d encountered with cracked screens, how easy phones were to damage, and swallowed, his hands suddenly feeling huge and clumsy. The slick surface of the phone felt like it’d slip free in an instant, but he didn’t dare hold it tight out of fear the thing would fucking shatter under the pressure.

And then Jack was there, passing over a small plastic sack. “Here, I picked up a screen protector and a case for it, if you want them.”

Oddly enough, the crazy impulsive rejection didn’t kick in with that- he’d _much_ rather have the phone be fucking protected than have that extra bit of guilt relieved. So he ignored Gavin’s weird as shit rant about why cases for iPhones were a stupid idea while he carefully snapped the case into place and applied the screen protector. It was hard, his hands were shaking for some reason.

He wouldn’t have noticed the loud rumble of his stomach at all if Geoff hadn’t sarcastically asked, “Hungry?”

Pausing, Michael thought about it and realized that yes, he was, and, wow, he’d… slept through the whole day. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He’d had readily available food and still missed a meal, what the _fuck_ was wrong with him?

He decided to pretend Geoff’s question was rhetorical and ignored him, focusing instead on the now-glowing screen under his fingertips. Well, at least he _did_ , until Gavin started making grabby gestures towards it.

“Lemme put our numbers in and get you hooked up to the wifi!”

“Oh, right,” Geoff rummaged in one of his pockets and came up with a small piece of paper, “here’s your number, you might want to memorize that.”

… they’d bought him a phone and, apparently, put him on their phone plan.

Well. That.

That was apparently the point where his brain just _stopped_. Mechanically, he reached out, took the paper, strove to commit the numbers to memory. But everything else, the nerves, the guilt, all sort of… they didn’t _fade_ , they were still _there_ , but he’d pretty much checked out.

Everything felt weird and distant, like what was around him wasn’t happening _to_ him. Like he was just watching as Gavin’s fingers flew over the surface of his phone and Geoff stared and him and Jack said something about food. Faintly, he realized the sounds coming from the kitchen were Ryan cooking something and Ray was… somewhere.

Honestly, he couldn’t bring himself to focus on anything. He tried to direct his attention in a direction and it just kept sliding like it was on ice.

He didn’t know what he looked like, but he felt Geoff go tense and weird behind him and Jack picked up on it too and Gavin was going to notice soon and-

Surging to his feet, trying to get away from suddenly feeling fucking surrounded, he left them behind and-

Couldn’t go to the guest room, that would feel like running, especially when he’d just have to come out soon for dinner anyway-

Dinner. The kitchen. Ryan.

That was good. That was fine. Safe.

Ryan made no comment whatsoever when Michael parked himself at the bar, perched on a stool with his chin resting on his folded arms. He was cutting up an unfamiliar array of vegetables and throwing them in a pot that had only just started to steam.

Like when Jack had made the omelets, Michael felt himself relaxing as he watched Ryan cook. The movements were just so… assured, maybe. It wasn’t weird for him to be cooking. Seasoning meat and cutting it into chunks, throwing it into a pan for a little while before dumping it in the same pot as before- it all seemed like anything else, as normal as washing your hands or jotting down a note. It wasn’t weird or unusual at all, in this place, to see someone cooking.

It _was_ normal, Michael knew, to cook. To make your own meals regularly. It wasn’t _actually_ weird.

But he couldn’t stop watching. And he wasn’t really sure why.

When he was done throwing things into the pot, Ryan went over to a red pepper of some kind that he’d set to one side and sliced it into strips. He put the knife in the sink, dumped the strips on a plate, came over, and dropped it in front of Michael.

“Stew’s gonna need a bit,” he explained, leaning casually against the bar. He picked a strip up off the plate, bit into it, and Michael could hear the crisp crunch from where he was sitting.

He wasn’t stupid enough to misinterpret the plate in front of him, so he warily picked up a piece and followed Ryan’s example. It was… surprisingly good. Not spicy, not really. There was something about it that was almost spicy, when he breathed out his nose, but it was more… sweet than anything. Not bad at all.

Back toward the couch, he could hear low voices and considered, just for a second, tuning in, trying to hear what they were talking about because he _had_ sort of left in the middle of something. But they didn’t sound upset and he was still feeling sort of empty and he’d much rather just munch on peppers in comfortable silence with Ryan.

That couldn’t last forever, of course, but it was a nice reprieve for a while, before Gavin hopped onto the stool next to him and slid the phone under his nose.

“Got all our numbers in! And Burnie’s, just in case. WiFi’s set up too, so you can get online now!” Gavin seemed especially proud of that last bit, settling the white box on the table so Michael could see the headphones and charging cord sticking out of it.

He should react. Right? How fucking broken was he that he didn’t know what to say, do, or even what expression to make? It had hit the point of too much and sailed beyond it, like a rope pulled and pulled until it snapped- you could keep pulling, but whatever was attached wasn’t getting anywhere near you.

The screen was default, so was the home page, when he flicked his fingers across it. What was he supposed to do with this thing? The internet was good. He could watch some of their videos, keep up with what they were doing. Learn more about Rooster Teeth in general.

He _could_ , but he had no chance in hell of hanging onto that information right then.

But Gavin was watching him, obviously expecting _something_. So he flicked through the options of the phone. He hadn’t ever had a cell before, but he’d stolen enough to know that there were a few things that you personalized. The background, the ringtone-

But… he didn’t have any pictures, or favorite songs. What was he supposed to carry around with him in his pocket if he didn’t have anything like that?

Finally, he just set a password. It wasn’t like he felt he _needed_ to lock the guys out of his phone, but he did need to do something to make Gavin think he was engaged in th-

… he never thanked them. He hadn’t thanked them for the phone, or- had he thanked them for anything? He definitely had, right?

Not that it was enough, not that it even came CLOSE to being enough, but still. He _should_ , right?

But Gavin had taken his own phone out and was currently texting Michael what seemed to be every damn emoji in his phone’s library for some reason that made sense only to him, Ryan had gone over to the stove and was talking in low voices with Geoff and Jack and saying anything to any of them now would really come out of left field-

Settling back down on the bar, he picked at the last strips of pepper, half his attention on Gavin and half on ignoring the unreadable looks the other three were giving him.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLOT TWIST I'M ALIVE
> 
> I am SO SORRY this took so long! I've been travelling and switching jobs and asd;fklja;sdfk
> 
> Not to mention I didn't want to end the chapter on the same note as the last three, so I kept pushing until I got to the place I wanted to end it, so this chapter is... long, yeah, really long.
> 
> Hopefully that makes up for it! I'll try and updated sooner rather than later!!

The next day, he didn’t wake up for breakfast.

He shouldn’t have slept through the faint sounds of people getting up and moving around, but he did. By the time he dragged himself out of bed, the clock on his phone told him it was ten thirty, long after the guys would’ve left.

It wasn’t like he’d fucking done it on purpose. He just… last night, after eating, he’d been tired again. It hadn’t made sense, he’d slept all day, but he’d barely managed to get back to the guest room before faceplanting into the pillow and passing the fuck out.

Getting up that morning hadn’t been high on the list of things he wanted to do, but he needed to do _something_ today. Like… he had a phone now, he could read up on Rooster Teeth, learn more about Achievement Hunter-

… there weren’t any breakfast dishes.

He paused, staring down at the sink blankly. It wasn’t like they were going to spawn into existence, but… the guys tended to do all their dishes at night, after dinner, if Michael hadn’t already gotten to them. Had-

Had they done the dishes before they left just so he wouldn’t?

Why would… had he messed it up somehow, the day before? And they just hadn’t wanted to tell him, so they did it themselves? On top of their already busy morning, they had to take time for that?

Feeling kind of sick, he backed up from the sink and toward the fridge, spotting a note that hadn’t been there before, tucked under a magnet.

It just said there was breakfast for him in the oven, if he wanted it. Well, that, and a lines of x’s and o’s that, according to an accusatory label and arrow, were the work of Gavin. Because of course they fucking were.

The plate in the oven was loaded down with stuff, biscuits, eggs, sausage- lots of stuff that could be cooked in bulk, a necessity when one house was shared amongst five guys and one hanger-on.

His stomach was tying itself in knots over the thoughts turning themselves over in his head, but that didn’t stop him at fucking all from devouring every single crumb off that plate. It didn’t really help him on the whole ‘staying awake’ front, but he wasn’t going to repeat yesterday’s mistake.

At least he could wash _his_ things, leave them neatly stacked in the sink. Didn’t help a _lot_ , but some was good.

He’d take what he could get.

There still wasn’t a lot he could do in the house, unless he wanted to explore the basement. He wasn’t ready to become an extra in a horror movie just yet, though, so he went back to the guest room.

The phone they’d bought him was sitting on the table by the bed. Gavin had downloaded the YouTube app to it, put it right on the home screen.

Well. It wasn’t the _worst_ way to spend the day.

 

* * *

 

 

For future reference, sprawling out on a bed to watch YouTube videos on a phone was not the best way to avoid falling asleep, especially if you’d just followed a huge breakfast with a lunch reluctantly scavenged from the refrigerator.

He hated digging through the kitchen looking for food. Not that he didn’t want to eat, he absolutely fucking did. The problem was he didn’t know if he was dipping into someone’s secret stash of stuff everybody but him knew not to mess with.

The _other_ problem was not eating every perishable thing in sight.

Back home, you didn’t have anywhere to store perishable stuff. If it was going to go bad, you ate it. You stored everything that would keep as long as you could, but you didn’t wait around on stuff that wasn’t going to be good long. That was just sense.

So the refrigerator, filled with shelves and shelves of perishables, was kind of the fucking worst.

The pantry was also bad, but for the opposite reason. Much as he didn’t want to take advantage of his welcome, Michael absolutely stole several granola bars to add to the stash in his backpack. Granted, he hadn’t had to dip into it yet, so it wasn’t like it actually needed to be replenished, but still. Better to have food and not need it than the alternative.

Getting near-constant texts from Gavin helped, but yeah, big breakfast, bigger lunch, by the time he woke up, it was late afternoon and he barely had time to grab a fast shower before the guys got home.

At least that way, they wouldn’t know he’d spent the whole day in bed.

Or, well. He _thought_ so. But when he stepped out into the hall with damp hair and saw Jack, his face did a thing that, Michael didn’t really know what the fuck it was, but it sure as shit wasn’t _happy_.

Jack opened his mouth, Michael braced himself, then suddenly Ray was there.

“Hey man, new game came out with co-op. I need someone to get those achievements with.”

“Doesn’t Gav usually help you with that?” said Geoff from- oh, he was right by Jack. Had he been there the whole time?

“Dude. You know Gavin can’t be trusted.”

“Oi!”

Michael was _more_ than happy to be the warm body that tagged along behind Ray as he wrecked shop- and that was something that he’d seen in some of the videos, but had had a hard time picturing. Ray was a _machine_ when it came to games. He’d systematically destroy everything in a rain of fire and explosions with the straightest fucking face Michael had ever seen.

Honestly, he wasn’t going to lie, it was kind of a turn on.

And _that_ was when Jack said food was ready and Michael forced himself to sit as far from Ray as possible.

That was the last fucking thing these guys deserved.

 

* * *

 

Michael didn’t want to get out of bed the next morning.

He’d been awake for… he didn’t even know how long. A while. He was actually pretty sure he’d fallen back asleep and woken up. Maybe even two or three times.

But he still didn’t want to get up.

It was warm, under the covers. And he was comfortable. And the guys were long gone, if his internal clock was to be believed.

Why shouldn’t he stay in bed? Opening his eyes felt like it would be miserable, and the fog of fatigue that had settled over his mind like a heavy blanket kept trying to drag him under and he _knew_ shaking it off would just postpone it and he’d be fucking exhausted until he went back to sleep anyway.

And it wasn’t like he would be productive if he got up. There wasn’t anything he could _do_ , outside of raiding the fridge. He wasn’t going to mess with the guys’ stuff and he didn’t really… _want_ to do anything.

Except sleep.

So he did.

 

* * *

 

He didn’t wake up before the guys got home.

Fortunately, it was Ryan who came knocking on his door. Ryan didn’t ask questions, even after Michael’s totally fucking weak lie about having fallen asleep just half an hour ago. He didn’t pry, just asked if Michael wanted anything from the store, Geoff and Jack were still out, making a run.

That gave him just enough time to make himself look human, before they came back.

 

* * *

 

It was about ten in the morning when his phone woke him up, the next day.

The thing hadn’t ever rung before, so he went from half-dead under the covers to panic mode in under a second, when the loud ringtone near his head sounded off.

Figuring out how to answer the call took him a bleary, confused second, but he did manage it. Eventually. “Uh-yeah, what- hi?”

“Hi,” that laughing voice was familiar, “you awake?”

“Yeah.” Swallowing down a yawn, Michael asked, “What’s up?”

Why was Burnie calling him? There was no way there was a problem, not when Burnie sounded so entertained, so why…?

“You got any plans for today?”

Michael pulled the phone away from his face to stare at it for a second, like the screen would be blank and he’d have hallucinated that question. After that failed to happen, he put it back to his ear. “I mean, I’m gonna have to check my calendar, but I think I can clear my schedule, yeah.”

“Smartass,” Burnie accused, but sounded like he was smiling. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes, that good?”

He’d showered after dinner because he slept so late, so he should be good to go after brushing his teeth and throwing on some clothes. “Uh, sure? Where-?”

“Great, see you in twenty.”

His phone blinked cheerfully at it when he glared at the call ended screen.

That was a lot to happen in the minute after he woke up.

Burnie was obviously up to something, but it was getting pretty fucking clear as time went on that these people were _always_ up to something. So far, it hadn’t been too bad, but that didn’t keep him from being nervous.

He still had clean clothes from that first night, which was good because he’d yet to investigate the bags in his closet again. It’d happen, probably, at some point. All the pristine clothing just made him nervous, sometimes.

A quick scavenge through the refrigerator produced and orange and a banana. His hands were going to smell like citrus for hours, but the day he turned down fresh fruit was the day he died.

Only when his hands were covered in fruit juice and he had bits of orange peel under his fingernails did he remember the biggest obstacle to leaving the house, which was why he hadn’t done it yet. Swearing under his breath, he quickly washed and dried his hands and pulled out his phone.

‘ _Burnies coming over how do I keep the alarm from calling the cops_ ’

Gavin texted back almost instantly. For what Michael could decipher between all the emojis, there was an app Gavin had installed on his phone already that controlled the house’s security system and some electronics.

Part of Michael wanted to slap him upside the head for giving someone who was practically a stranger a skeleton key to his home, but the other part just thought being able to control the alarm from his phone was _so fucking cool_.

Jack texted him while he was busy poking through the app to give him the actual codes for the house, just in case the app wasn’t working for some reason. Again. These people really needed to take a good long look at their priorities. Particularly the ones about self-preservation being fucking important.

But then Burnie was at the door and the app worked like a charm and that was _so damn awesome_.

“Hey!” Burnie grinned. “Here, come help me with this.”

There was a bike rack on the back of Burnie’s car. Burnie got the bike down while Michael used his phone to open up the garage.

“What’s that for?” he asked, tucking his phone back into his pocket and trying to ignore the sinking suspicion in his gut that he already knew the answer.

“Well,” Burnie said, wheeling the bike into the garage and into place beside the other bikes there, “I’ve been wanting to get into biking, but it turns out I’m too tall for the last bike I bought and I didn’t just want to throw it out, so I thought maybe you could use it, especially since the other guys are gone so much of the day.”

“… oh.” Well that wasn’t too bad. He gave the bike another look and it did seem in good shape. Kind of dusty and dull, like it’d been sitting around unused for a while, but it had moved smoothly when Burnie walked it into garage and there was no visible rust or anything. “Uh, yeah. Thanks.”

“Sure,” Burnie said brightly, stepping back after pushing the bike into place, then rolling his shoulders and tipping his head toward his car, “Okay, let’s go!”

“… go where?” Michael asked warily, even as he followed, because really, what the fuck else was he going to do?

Shrugging, Burnie slid into the driver’s seat. “Well I haven’t gotten a bike yet and I figure you need a thing or two for yours. Might as well go all at once.”

“What more do I need that the actual fucking bike?” he asked, and it was alarming how quickly he was giving up on talking people out of buying him shit.

“It’s coming up on summer,” Burnie said, pulling out into the street. “You need somewhere to put a water bottle at the very least. I don’t know how you handled summers in New Jersey, but Texas is a whole other fucking animal.”

“Yeah,” Michael looked out the window. “I can believe that.”

 

* * *

 

The look of surprised on Burnie’s face when Michael accepted a helmet without argument was almost funny.

He was way too familiar with the taste of asphalt to turn down something like that. Pavement could shred skin and break bone in an instant, fuck pride.

Once was enough for him.

Other than that, Michael was just saddled with a water bottle holder and a water bottle to go with it and that was it. He didn’t quite dare to hope they were slowing down, but the thought crossed his mind as he watched Burnie and a salesman do the delicate dance of ‘I want to make sure I’m getting the right thing but don’t want to get taken for a ride here’.

It was actually a pretty quick trip, or would’ve been, if Burnie hadn’t insisted on stopping by Sonic on the way back to the guys’ house.

Which was how Michael found himself sitting on the step in the garage, eating a chili cheese dog and watching Burnie assemble a bicycle out of a box because it was cheaper than getting a pre-assembled one.

“I should’ve done this after dark,” Burnie muttered under his breath, running a hand over his forehead but making no move to actually stop working in the muggy garage.

Snorting, Michael made a grab for his drink. Yeah, it was hot, but that hadn’t stopped being cool for him yet. Plus, that was what iced drinks were for. “Pretty sure Geoff’ll pitch a fit if you leave that in the middle of the garage until it gets cooler.”

Burnie pointed a wrench at him. “I’m gonna finish, but that doesn’t mean I can’t bitch about it.”

“Yeah, no fucking kidding.”

It was kinda nice, though, just sitting and watching Burnie work. Not quite as nice as watching Jack or Ryan cook, but still cool to see how everything came together.

“Okay,” Burnie said, after tightening all screws and spinning all wheels. He reached for his helmet, “You want to take these for a spin?”

“Uh…” Casting a nervous glance over at the bike, Michael struggled to find words. “Yeah, I just…”

“… Did you ever learn to ride?” Burnie asked, after a few moments of silence.

“I did!” Michael insisted, before Burnie could get it into his head that Michael’s childhood had been even MORE tragic than he seemed to already think it was. “I just… it’s been awhile.”

Grinning, Burnie shook his head. “Nah, you never forget.”

“That’s a fucking saying, it doesn’t mean it’s _true_.”

“One way to find out.

So, the never forgetting thing was _technically_ true, but there was definitely a relearning period involved. Also, he somehow managed to run over his own foot twice by accident.

Running over Burnie’s foot was not an accident, which was not something he was going to admit.

But it didn’t take him as long as he thought it would, to relearn balance. To go back to automatically braking. Old habits he’d forgotten entirely, but that his body had apparently remembered.

It was cool and also pretty damn creepy.

“Alright,” Burnie said, when he was satisfied Michael wasn’t going to fall off the bike and break his neck before making it a hundred yards. “I’ll show you where the nearest store and stuff is, so you won’t have to wait on the guys if you need something.”

Thank fucking god. Because, shit, it wasn’t like Michael had a lot of disposable income (HA), but he’d been relying on the guys for pretty much everything short of oxygen for the last week. The sooner he could go back to taking care of himself, the better it’d be for everyone.

Biking without falling over was satisfying, but the best thing was when he got up to speed. Put a bit of effort into it and the asphalt fell away under his tires.

Cutting through the muggy air fast enough it blew his hair back away from his face, he barely slowed down enough to turn the next corner. Knowing he could go as long as he wanted, as far as he wanted, _whenever_ he wanted… something as simple as a _bicycle_ shouldn’t make him feel the way it did, but his feet could only take him so far at once.

To be honest, it was only Burnie calling him back that kept him from going until he either passed out or died. The heat was awesome, but it was also getting kinda stifling. And eating a whole lot of salty food, then biking as fast as he could probably wasn’t the smartest thing.

It wasn’t that he wanted to go back to Jersey anymore, not really. But damn, the ability to just _go_ was more than a little tempting.

But it wasn’t overwhelming. Besides, Burnie was with him. If he _were_ going to go, he’d be smart about it. No leaving with witnesses, no leaving without a head start.

That was just sense.

Burnie fell back into pace with him, frowned, then veered a hard right. They were on the edges of the neighborhood now, right up near a main road. There was a gas station on the corner and a Walgreens beside it, with a bike rack near the doors.

Pulling right up to it, Burnie hooked his bike on the rack, then frowned. “We don’t actually have any locks, we need to get those. You mind watching these while I run inside?”

Michael just nodded. He was a little out of breath, which was weird. It felt like biking had taken barely any effort at all, but he definitely felt like he’d done a lot more. Hot, a little shaky. That was weird, it wasn’t like they’d been out for all that _long_ , so what the fuck?

The entire span of Burnie being inside the store was a hot fog. He wasn’t alarmed or anything, he was in the shade, so he should be fine. He just felt… kinda weird, was all.

And then Burnie was back, the handles of a plastic bag looped over one wrist as he cracked open a water bottle and passed it over. “Drink that.”

Oh hey, water was nice. Despite attaching the water bottle holders, they hadn’t actually thought to fill the bottles before they left.

The bottle was already slick with condensation and Michael hadn’t realized at all how thirsty he was until the first sip, after which he had a few seconds of attempting to inhale the water before a hand hooked around his wrist and pulled.

He choked a little in surprised as the bottle moved away from his mouth. “The _fuck_ , man?”

“Drink it _that_ fast and you’ll make yourself sick. Take it easy.”

Michael made a point to roll his eyes and make a show of taking small sips slowly, even if he did want to go right back to chugging the thing, but it seemed to satisfy Burnie, who nodded and went back to rummaging in the bag, producing a little plastic tube.

“C’mere,” he said, squeezing out something white, and the smell hit Michael like a freight train.

Shaking his head to rid it of the phantom scent of chlorine and hot asphalt, he said, “I don’t need sunscreen.”

“You’re fucking red already, you came here straight outta winter, and you’ve got fair skin, hold still.”

And Michael had one hand holding an open bottle of water and the other steadying his bike, so he couldn’t exactly move when Burnie smeared sunscreen across the bridge of his nose, but he did flinch back, feeling his entire face scrunch up into some sort of expression of disgust that made Burnie laugh, even as he kept working.

“You’ll thank me later. Come on, bike locks, then I’ll show you what else you’ve got nearby.”

 

* * *

 

Michael was exhausted by the time he got back to the guys’ house that evening.

It was a good sort of exhausted, where his muscles were sort of twitchy, but well worked, and there was no room left in his brain for overthinking anything.

He waved tiredly as Burnie drove off down the street, then slogged into the garage and nudged his bike to rest alongside the other two in there. Both cars were in the garage, so the guys were all home, probably.

Toeing off his shoes, he stepped into the house and shuddered as the air conditioner hit his skin. Sweat chilled him even more as it started to dry and, ugh, he really fucking needed a shower, he felt all gross.

Pausing in the hall, he knocked the heel of his hand against his forehead.

One day, a little sweat, a little dirt, and he felt ‘all gross’, fuck, he was getting pampered here.

Things were oddly quiet as he moved through the living room, but a rich smell was coming from the kitchen, so someone had put something in the oven recently.

Faint voices came from down the hall and Michael almost paused. He hadn’t investigated the guys’ room yet and hadn’t planned on it, but after a few seconds he realized the sound… wasn’t coming from the master bedroom.

Silently nudging the door to the guest room open, he froze at the scene in front of him.

“You’re pushing it too hard! You’re going to break it.”

“Gavin, I know what I’m doing, this isn’t my first time building one of these.”

“Where’s the HDMI cords?”

“At the bag by your foot.”

“Oh, thanks Jack.”

“Pass me that power strip, Gav.”

Michael’s helmet hit the wooden floor of the hall with a _crack_ that made him and all five of the men in the guest room jump.

Gavin was sitting in the desk chair, leaning over Ryan who was crosslegged on the floor, fiting a panel into what looked like a computer tower. Geoff had one arm between the desk and the wall, trying to find an outlet, judging by the power strip he was holding.

Ray was standing beside the desk with a handful of looped cord, half hidden behind flat screen monitors. And Jack was holding a green box with a familiar logo.

“What?” Michael croaked, trying to push his train of thought manually along the track and failing.

“Bollocks,” Gavin swore emphatically. “We were hoping Burnie would keep you busy longer.”

The casing snapped into place under Ryan’s hands as Michael stared. “What?”

“Only makes sense for you to learn to use this stuff before you come to work.” Geoff managed to find an outlet and plugged the strip in with a grin. “Saves us time training you if you can practice on your own, right?”

“How much-”

“We comped it, RoosterTeeth is covering it,” Jack said, and he had the soothing voice going on, even as he put the Xbox within reach of Ray. “Really, this isn’t stuff the rest of us haven’t got at work.”

“Now we can play together!” Gavin grinned, spinning a card between his hands. “Just gotta get you set up with a gamertag and some games.”

There was a very real chance Michael was going to throw up.

“I don’t-”

“ _Don’t_ thank us,” Geoff said, standing and shoving his hands into his pockets and looking very much like he knew thanking them was the _last_ thing on Michael's mind. “Technically, we should probably be paying you while you’re ‘training’, but I’m pretty sure that’s illegal while we haven’t hired you yet. And learning this stuff takes a while. So it’s not like you’re getting all this for no reason, it’ll be a fucking relief if you can just jump in once we get everything sorted.”

It was too much.

Too much, too much, _too much_ -

Michael swallowed. Squeezed his eyes shut. Opened them.

Everyone was still there, with fucking cords and thousands of dollars of electronics and expectant expressions and.

He swallowed again. What could he say?

“Okay.”

He could wait until they went to sleep to have a meltdown.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLOT TWIST I'M STILL ALIVE
> 
> Yoooo, you guys didn't have to wait a month this time! I'm proud of that, I consider it an accomplishment. I'm also reeeeaaaally glad I'm able to get this out before my birthday (the 13th) because I'm going to be pretty busy for a few days after and didn't want to postpone it THAT long.
> 
> But, as always, we're getting closer and closer to more dramatic scenes because we're getting through the setup at a pretty steady clip! Speaking of, one of the drama scenes I've most been looking forward to writing is either going to be in the next chapter or the one after that. If it's in the next chapter, whooo boy, that'll be a mega-chapter. Like, we'll break 100K on that one.
> 
> Sidenote: Holy shit, I can't believe we're THIS CLOSE to 100K oh my god, what is my life.

Ray wouldn’t leave.

Michael hadn’t actually _told_ him to leave, considering it was his house and not Michael’s, but he’d hinted pretty strongly and, despite what he might want people to believe, Ray wasn’t actually socially incompetent.

Which meant he was just being a fucking jackass.

“I’d say they mean well, but they don’t think far enough ahead for that,” Ray was saying, sitting cross-legged on the bed with a tangle of HDMI cords, a couple of small electronic boxes, and a handful of strips of Velcro.

Michael buried his face in his hands to keep from beating it against a wall. “How much did all of this fucking _cost_?”

“You think they let _me_ see a receipt? Really?” At Michael’s surprised look, Ray shrugged, bundling another loop of cord together. “They really did just comp it. They only person who might be able to get you a number would be Burnie. And let’s face it, Burnie’s not gonna tell you shit.”

Pressing his back to the closed door to the hall, Michael took a few deep breaths. “This is insane. They’re fucking insane, you know that, right?”

“The fucking is pretty insane, I’ll give you that.” Ray smirked as he connected three different HDMI cables to the same little box. “But they haven’t bankrupted themselves yet. They just see it as an investment.”

“And how the fuck am I supposed to make sure that investment gets returned? I didn’t graduate fucking Junior High.”

Ray shrugged, taking his tangle of cords over to the monitors. “Looks like you’re learning to ignore your common sense telling you to run. Good first step.”

“I wasn’t going to.” Not _yet_ , anyway. He had to at least _try_.

“Uh huh.” Head disappearing behind the monitors as he started to plug things in, Ray’s voice went a little quieter, a little deeper. “Not like you run off every time I turn my back or anything.”

Michael’s stomach dropped. He hadn’t thought- but Ray was right. The only time he ran was when Ray wasn’t around, except the first time, when he literally ran the second Ray turned his back. It wasn’t on purpose or whatever, he hadn’t _planned_ it. Just bolted when he felt he needed to. He hadn’t considered what that might look like, feel like, to Ray.

“Ray-”

“I mean, I don’t blame you,” Ray cut him off like he hadn’t even spoken, still keeping his head behind the monitor even though Michael was damn sure he’d already attached everything that needed attaching and really didn’t need to double check it all that much. “If I thought I could lose them, I might too. But dude, you have no idea how much having Gavin clinging to your ankles slows you down. And Ryan’s a sneaky fuck. He’ll probably be waiting for you outside the window.”

It was hard to stop visualizing that, but Michael shook his head to clear it. “So what? I’m supposed to just put up with it?”

“I mean you could probably ask for a restraining order, but I don’t think there’s a judge that’ll tell people to stay away because they were too nice to you. And I don’t think you can file harassment charges against people you live with.”

Groaning in frustration, Michael fell face first onto the bed and stayed there, even when he felt the mattress bounce from Ray flopping down beside him.

“What the fuck am I supposed to be doing here, Ray? Like seriously, _what the fuck_?”

“I don’t know dude, Ryan installed editing software on that thing. I don’t edit shit. Google it?”

“That’s not what I meant, you asshole.”

Ray shoved at his shoulder. “Take a shower, come out and eat dinner, help me get that last fucking co-op achievement. If you still feel like running to another country after, I’ve got a guy for that. _Or_ , we can have a totally straight sleepover so Ryan doesn’t track your ass over the border.”

Michael paused. Lifted his head. “’Totally straight sleepover’?”

“Sleepbrover. Gavin’s gotta come, he’ll break up with me if we don’t invite him. And then we’d have to put tape down every room in the house and fight over who gets the gents during the week and who gets them on weekends- really it’s just best to let him build a fucking pillow fort.”

_Thick blankets on top of thin carpet, TV light filtering through sheets held up by stacks of VHS tapes, burnt popcorn-_

Michael squeezed his eyes shut.

“I’m just finding it fucking hard to believe anything can be totally straight in this house.”

“Good, because it can’t and it’d be awkward if you freaked when I brought out the nail polish.”

Burying his faces in the blankets, Michael laughed because he was very quickly running out of other options for letting the hysteria out.

 

* * *

 

Michael was exhausted.

He was also very, very smug.

“That was a sucker bet in the first place, you can’t back out now.” He’d had French toast before, but not often, and it was hard to talk between shoveling bites of food into his face.

“But Michael!” Gavin whined from the other side of the bar. “It’s not fair, you don’t have to go into work or anything, you don’t even have to leave the house!”

“Should’ve thought of that _before_ you bet him a hundred bucks,” Ray was smirking at his boyfriend from behind his glass. “Not his fault you didn’t think the bet through.”

Geoff shuffled into the kitchen, glanced over, then paused. “Is Michael wearing nail polish?”

Propping his chin in a hand so he could show off his glittery pink nails, Michael fluttered his eyelashes at Geoff. “It brings out my eyes.”

“Gavin bet him a hundred bucks to wear it for a week.”

Geoff snorted and smirked, “Let me guess, he’s trying to back out now?”

“He doesn’t have to go out in public!” Gavin screeched.

“Where did you even get the fucking nail polish? None of you drive.”

“We’re lucky Ryan doesn’t sleep,” was all Ray said to that.

Planting his hands on the bar Gavin leaned forward. “How about this, _two_ hundred quid, _but_ you have to go out somewhere every day.”

Michael scoffed, “I’ll do it. Fucking two hundred bucks, I will paint my toenails to match and go barefoot.”

Geoff cackled like a maniac while Gavin threw up his arms in exasperation and stomped away from the bar. “Dude, give it up. I don’t think he has a fuck to give.”

“It’s true. Sad story, I lost all my fucks in the winter of ’99.”

“Tragic.” Ray calmly carried his dishes over to the sink.

Geoff was still chuckling to himself when he snapped his fingers. “Oh, right. Michael, we’ve got a convention we gotta go to in a week, so you’ll have the place to yourself next weekend- what’s that look for?”

“Nothing,” Michael stabbed at the last piece of French toast on his plate, “just wondering how the fuck you guys haven’t been robbed blind yet.”

Rolling his eyes, Geoff knocked back half a mug of black coffee, grimaced, and gestured at Michael’s arm. “Lemme see that.”

Michael put his arm in Geoff’s hands immediately. To say he was eager to overwrite the last time they did this with a more normal interaction was an understatement. “They’re starting to come off.”

“Yeah, they’re supposed to.” Geoff was running his fingers over the partially-healed line and checking each butterfly stitch as he did. The light touch was enough to make Michael’s hair stand on end, but Geoff ignored it. “It’s not red anymore either, that’s good.” Michael immediately tucked his arm between him and the bar when Geoff let go- and he ignored that too. “Couple more days and you should be fine. Your eye finally cleared up too.”

“Look at that, I’m gonna look like a fucking normal person soon.” They both knew that wasn’t true, what with the scars, but Geoff didn’t call him on it. He seemed to be ignoring every weird thing Michael did. Which would be something Michael appreciated if it weren’t also _so fucking dangerous_.

But then Geoff moved a little closer, leaned against the bar beside Michael, hooked a thumb under his right sleeve, and pulled it up to his shoulder. Ray and Gav were both over by the sink, bickering good naturedly about _something_ , so Geoff’s body was blocking their view of the ugly bruise on Michael’s arm.

It was getting better, sort of. The bruising was deep, so the center was still really dark, but the edges were turning yellow and green. It’d take a while, but it would go away.

Geoff seemed to come to the same conclusion, since he pulled the sleeve back down without commenting. “Your ribs?” he asked under his breath.

All of Michael’s willpower went into stopping himself from curling his arm around his ribs. Instead, he shook his head. “They’re getting there.”

Propping an elbow on the bar, Geoff leaned down to catch Michael’s eye and give him a dubious look. “Slowly, huh?”

Exhaling explosively, Michael pushed away from the bar and slipped down onto his feet, picking up his dishes as he did. “Very,” he admitted, before going to interrupt the wrestling match that was threatening to break out over the breakfast dishes.

 

* * *

 

Michael sat at the desk in the guest room for a solid twenty minutes before reaching out to stab at the power button of the new computer.

He didn’t have any idea exactly how it all worked, but he knew the fact it all worked seamlessly was one hell of a credit to Ryan’s ability to put it together.

It was next to impossible to know where to start. There was a neat stack of instruction manuals in the drawer to his right, but he couldn’t use them. Not until he knew what he was going to do with all this.

Learn to use the equipment. Easier said than done. He _could_ record Let’s Plays on his own, but what would be the point? All the Achievement Hunter videos he’d seen had had more than one person, he wasn’t sure any of them even _did_ solo videos. It’d be moronic to practice something he wouldn’t use.

So what in the hell could he do by _himself_?

He had to do _something_. Figuring everything out would be next to impossible without some kind of goal.

Maybe he shouldn’t focus on that at first. He could at the very least test the microphone and capture card. Make sure he even knew how to record with them. He could go from there.

 

* * *

 

It was only when his stomach grumbled loudly that he realized a few hours had passed.

A few hours and he didn’t feel like he’d made any progress at all. Between figuring out how to find, download, and install the right drivers, not to mention how to do so without accidentally putting some kind of virus on the new computer, he’d only just gotten to the point where he might, conceivably, be able to push record and have it work.

But he wasn’t in the habit of going hungry when he didn’t have to, so he stood, wincing when his back and elbows cracked loudly. He hadn’t realized how stiff he’d gotten, his arm and ribs throbbed plaintively, like they always did when he first woke up in the mornings.

Lurching unsteadily toward the kitchen, he pulled open the fridge door and took out the plate of leftover French toast. He still had so much work to do, the idea of spending the time to heat it up and take out dishes and wash them after seemed borderline irresponsible.

And that was how he accidentally figured out the cold French toast was one of the most delicious things he had ever tasted.

He took the plate of leftovers and a water bottle and disappeared back into the guest room.

 

* * *

 

Gavin poked his head in five hours later. “Hey, Michael! Geoff’s mak-”

“Why,” Michael snarled, jabbing a finger at the computer screen, “does the goddamn audio desync the further it gets into the fucking video?”

For a second, Gavin just blinked, but he recovered quickly. “Happens sometimes. You can unsync the video and audio and line them up yourself, though.”

Tangling his fingers in his hair, Michael gave the curls a tug and tried not the let the frustrated groan in his chest spill out.

He’d been wrestling with the equipment all day. Just ironing out all the small details to get basic video and audio files to _work with_ was giving him a fucking migraine. And he hadn’t even _opened_ the editing program yet.

And now he had to figure out how to fix it manually. It had taken him long enough to figure out where to set the audio levels and it had taken him even longer to figure out how to export the capture footage and the commentary separately.

Not that he really had anything interesting to _say_ , and the game was just a little flash game he got for cheap, because Geoff had given him a code that added money to his XBL account that he couldn’t _use_ for anything else. But for Christ’s sake.

He’d known being an Achievement Hunter wasn’t going to be as easy as it looked, but he didn’t expect it to be _this_ hard.

It probably wasn’t even that fucking hard, it was just because he’d barely touched a computer for the last decade, except for the shitty dinosaurs in Maggie’s library. Most anyone else would probably be less of a fucking idiot than he was and pick this all up way faster.

Having almost forgotten Gavin was in the room, he jumped a little when a hand hooked under his arm and pulled.

“Come on, Michael!” Gavin was smiling, tugging a little every so often. “It’s Friday! Geoff’s going to grill and then we’re all gonna watch something! It’s the _weekend_ , Michael, you don’t work on the _weekend_.”

No, but he did, apparently, impose on their dates. Christ, they didn’t get to have any time by themselves while he was around.

They kept trying to include him which was… polite or whatever, but it was going to get old fucking fast and having him hovering around was going to start to annoy them.

But right then, Gavin was looking at him with big eyes and a hopeful expression and his fingers were warm against Michael’s skin.

He _did_ need to work, to learn how to use all this stuff so he could be good at his job, afford his own place, get out of their hair.

It was hard not to be selfish, though. Too hard, as it turned out.

“Okay,” he said, allowing himself to be pulled from the chair and the guest room.

Later. He could work more _later_. After they went to sleep, he’d have plenty of time, during the night.

Right then, Gavin was still excited to see him. And he was fucking weak, because he was going to enjoy that as long as he could.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> STILL ALIVE! Which is really surprising given A the amount of medical issues I have and B the fact that it gets up to 109 degrees here with DISTURBING regularity. And I have no AC in my vehicle. Yaaaaay....
> 
> Oh boy, oh boy, what fun we have here. NOT the super drama chapter, sorry guys, but I'm a bit ahead and just about to start in on the super drama scenes for NEXT chapter, so bear with me! And enjoy!

Working at night was all well and good- but he could only do so much. He could record gameplay footage until the dusk was dawn, but when it came to learning how to edit the things, he needed audio to play off of and he couldn’t record audio with the guys in the house.

Or, well. He _could_. But the guest room sure as shit wasn’t soundproofed. He didn’t want to wake them up at night by accident and he also didn’t want to record if they could hear him.

It wasn’t that he was embarrassed or anything. He just had no idea what he was supposed to record, it’d mostly be just test stuff. And he’d spent a godawful amount of time looking at any Let’s Plays he could get his hands on, so he’d know what beginner mistakes to avoid. Hesitant, quiet audio was a fucking huge one. If he was going to record, he wasn’t going to do it nervous, or when he felt like he had to keep it down.

During the day his time was pretty much monopolized by Gavin, with Ray occasionally rescuing him for a few hours of actual achievement hunting, because his XBL account was brand new and having a gamerscore under ten thousand was apparently ‘just sad’.

He liked the evenings best, though. He liked watching Ryan cook while everyone else milled around, Geoff fucking with Gavin usually, while Ray pretended (badly) to be paying attention to whatever was on TV and not watching his boyfriends with amusement in his eyes. Jack didn’t bother with pretending, though he did occasionally goad one of them on.

It was a kind of controlled chaos and Michael nearly jumped in several times, but managed to hold himself back at the last second.

Barging into their dynamic wasn’t something he was going to do, no matter how tempting it might be or how easy it might look. He tried to slip away, sometimes, give them time to themselves, but Ryan had some fucking eagle eyes and always called him into the kitchen to help with something right when he was about to make a break for it.

He still didn’t get it. But he wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity to watch Ryan cook up close, or taste test whatever he was making.

Usually, they’d let him escape after dinner, which made him feel a little better. They could have that time to themselves and he could catch a short nap before waking up after they went to bed so he could work.

The vibration function on his phone was more than enough to wake him up, especially if he kept it in a drawer. All he had to do was set it for one or two in the morning and he was set.

Losing daylight hours sucked, but he was able to learn a lot at night. The internet was awesome, you could find guides to anything. Who had the time, incentive, or motivation to _write_ those guides was beyond him, but they were really fucking helpful.

Even so, he was glad when Monday rolled around and he was able to see the guys off, then immediately grab a Red Bull out of the fridge and go back to the guest room to set up the microphone.

Red Bull was still disgusting, but it also _worked_ , so he’d been drinking a ridiculous amount of them over the weekend. He didn’t get _why_ two or three hours of sleep a night was suddenly so hard on him when he’d been used to it for years, but at least he had a way to drive off the fatigue.

The energy drink did its work quickly and he sat down in front of the microphone and sifted through the cheapo games he’d gotten until he found one that looked promising, hit record, and settled in.

 

* * *

 

After four hours of experimentation, Michael had learned exactly two things.

First, you had to practically make out with the pop filter to get audio that didn’t sound like you were trying to record from halfway across the room.

Second, he desperately needed to come up with some kind of way to make syncing the audio and capture up easier because it was a _bitch_.

The responses to the video Geoff tweeted made it sound like people thought it was really funny when he lost his shit at a video game (or a British idiot), and the arcade games he’d gotten seemed split into two groups- ‘baby’s first flash game’ and ‘going to fuck you in the ass’. So that, he might be able to do.

Just as soon as he figured out how to clean up the goddamn audio.

He stood, grimacing as his muscles bitched at him for sitting so long. His head throbbed too, all of a sudden, and he waited it out until it adjusted to the fact that he was standing now.

Too much staring at a screen, probably. He needed to give his eyes a break.

Taking his glasses off, he folded them carefully and left them on the desk. He couldn’t see jack shit anymore, but he didn’t really need details, at this point, just the relief of feeling his eyes relax.

Besides, he could probably reach the kitchen blindfolded by now.

His eyes burned when he squeezed them shut, so he rubbed at them while he walked. Yeah, probably too much staring at the screen.

The refrigerator was still his nemesis, but there was only so much he could pull out of there that didn’t require cooking and microwaving was one thing, but he did not feel comfortable actually using the stone or the oven or any cookware. Not that he could cook, but even if he could, it wasn’t going to happen.

So he tended to gravitate towards fruit and leftovers, of which there were always plenty and usually he could just nuke them in the microwave and it was fine.

He hated that he just took and took and hated it more with every new fucking day. But Burnie was right, if he was going to do this, he was going to do it right, and wait for the fucking pieces of paper that were basically certificates of authenticity for his existence.

Part of him wanted to cut back on eating everything in sight, to just sort of manage it better, but when he did all he could think about was what he could be eating, how long it was going to be until the guys got back, he didn’t want them to walk in on him shoulder-deep in their fridge, whether or not they would actually care.

So he stuck to leftovers and Red Bull and wrote the slight dizziness off as side effect of not wearing his glasses.

 

* * *

 

By the next day, the headache had gone from a ‘just don’t move too fast’ sort of thing to a constant ache behind his eyes and his throat was sore.

That maybe had something to do with screaming into a microphone for three hours earlier in the day, though.

He’d said hi when the guys got back and Jack had instantly made a beeline for the kitchen, pulled a kettle (an honest to god _kettle_ ) out of a cabinet, and set water boiling.

“Don’t worry,” he said, as he pressed a hot mug into Michael’s hands a few minutes later, “you’ll get used to it.” Which didn’t really make him feel better.

Normally, he thought tea was fucking disgusting, but Jack had put milk and a lot of honey in it, so it wasn’t so bad, really.

No, the bad part about sitting on the couch drinking hot leaf water was how very quickly you’d find yourself fighting off sleep.

It shouldn’t have been so much of a struggle to stay awake, unless Jack had drugged him (which he hadn’t, Michael had watched him make the tea), especially with the guys hanging around and making the traditional amount of noise associated with Gavin being ridiculous.

“We’re not opening the pool until May, Gav,” Geoff was saying. “We’ve talked about this.”

“But Geoff, it was eighty bloody degrees today!”

“Yeah, and it’s barely fucking March. This weekend it’s going to be in the fifties and we might have _snow_ next week. There’s no point opening the damn pool until it’s going to stay warm long enough to use it.”

Gavin made an annoyed noise and flopped dramatically on the couch next to Michael- and it was a really fucking good thing that Michael was nearly done with his tea because it would have gone _everywhere_ otherwise. “C’mon, Michael, don’t you want to use the pool?”

Absolutely fucking not, not until full-body swimsuits came back in style. “Don’t drag _me_ into this shit.”

Ray looked up from his DS. “Besides, Michael doesn’t have a swimsuit.”

“Yes he does!”

Michael blinked. Looked up from his tea. “ _What_?”

“I picked one out for you when we went shopping! It’s in your things, didn’t you see it?”

“I… no?”

Gavin leapt up from the couch and darted off down the hall and Michael blamed the tea, the drowsiness, and just his own dumbassery for the fact that he didn’t realize Gavin had gone _looking_ until he poked his head back into the room.

“Michael? Why haven’t you unpacked yet, Michael? Everything’s still in bags with the tags on.”

It was a real shame there wasn’t enough tea left in the mug to drown himself.

There was a split second of silence, a second where his body went cold, his heart jumped into his throat, and he clutched the mug in his hands so tightly he was surprised the ceramic didn’t shatter as he braced himself for awkward silence and weighted looks.

And then-

“Well maybe if _someone_ actually got their stuff out of the dryer after it was finished, other people might be able to wash their new things before putting them away.”

Gavin was already loudly protesting by the time Michael processed Ryan’s words. He looked over, but Ryan wasn’t even looking at him, just slowly raising an eyebrow at Gavin’s ‘argument’.

Michael swallowed hard once, twice, then knocked back the rest of the tea and went to rinse out the mug so he wouldn’t have to look at anyone else in the room.

After he set the mug in the dishwasher, he’d barely gotten his hands dry before Gavin came up behind him, hooked a hand under his arm, and dragged him off to excitedly show him how to work their fancy new washer and dryer.

Taking the tags off all the new clothes sort of made Michael want to throw up, but not as much as the idea of having to make eye contact with Ray or Jack or Geoff, so he clenched his teeth as he systematically went through the clothes and destroyed any chance he had of being able to return them.

 

* * *

 

When the nausea was still hanging around on Wednesday, he started to get a little worried.

There were about seventeen separate reasons he needed to not get sick and five of them were asleep down the hall. The other dozen were variations on the theme of he knew, just _knew_ , that if he got sick, they’d make a big fucking deal about it.

But it wasn’t like he felt _that_ bad, and he wasn’t going to really have to worry about the guys for too long.

“You’re leaving tomorrow?” He asked over breakfast. The only one still there was Ryan, the others had headed up early to get started on videos since they were going to be gone, but Ryan had been sleeping for once, so they didn’t wake him.

Also, a Ryan who’d slept and had to go through the process of actually waking up was a hilariously slow Ryan.

He was hovering over a can of Diet Coke, slumped so low that his nose was almost poking through the open tab. “Mhmm,” he seemed half asleep still. “Conventions start on Fridays and no one wants to fly in first thing in the morning and do a panel right after getting off a plane.”

“That makes sense.” In a rare show of luck, the guys had sort of hurried out that morning and there hadn’t really been a breakfast so much as they’d grabbed whatever they felt like from the fridge or pantry before leaving. So Michael sticking to toast to avoid wasting food if it made him sick was not weird. Especially because there were like four different kinds of jams and jellies (what the _fuck_ was the difference?) for him to try, for whatever fucking reason.

“We’ll probably head out from the office,” Ryan continued picking at a bowl of oatmeal, “it’s way closer to the airport than the house, so that’s what we usually do, and that way we can at least get _some_ work done before leaving.”

So after they left in the morning, he wasn’t going to have to worry about getting sick or pretending to be asleep. Perfect. “When’s your flight?”

Rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand, Ryan stood to toss his coke can and take his dishes to the sink. “Twelve or two, I forget, somewhere in there. We’ve got two layovers, so we’re still going to get in pretty late.”

Lots of time with their phones in Airplane Mode, so he wouldn’t be getting constant texts from Gavin. Also perfect. Less likely to result in constant phone calls if he didn’t respond within ten minutes.

“I restarted the dryer earlier,” Ryan’s voice was pitched over the sound of running water as he cleaned out his bowl, “so your stuff won’t be all wrinkled when you get it out.”

Oh, right.

Swallowing hard, Michael fiddled with the dull knife he’d been using. “Thanks, by the way. For yesterday.”

Ryan just shrugged, cutting off the water and reaching for a nearby rag to dry his hands. “Gavin doesn’t really understand that not everyone is okay talking about every little thing that crosses their mind. I’d say it was part of his charm, but I’m pretty sure that’s the Stockholm Syndrome talking.”

Michael found himself smiling, wanting to ask how Ryan had ended up with them all. But then, he wasn’t Gavin. And asking that sort of thing wasn’t something you did first thing in the morning, to a guy you barely knew.

But it surprised him, how much he wanted to know. How much he wanted to know everything he could about these guys.

It was a good thing Ryan had to leave soon after that. Michael wasn’t sure how much he could trust himself, when he was feeling that way.

Plus, he had to force himself to finish off his third piece of toast and he knew that Ryan, of all people, would have picked up on that, if he’d stayed.

 

* * *

 

He was productive that day. He watched some tutorials for the editing program he was trying to figure out, learned a few new tricks.

Maybe he also had to refer to video tutorials to figure out how to fold the clothes he hauled to the guest room from the dryer, but that wasn’t necessarily a _bad_ thing.

It felt _weird_ , to put stuff in drawers, on shelves and hangers in the closet. It was hard to really say why, but the act of putting everything away neatly made him feel fake, like he was lying somehow.

Then again, everything sort of felt weird. The headache was making it hard to focus, kept making him want to shut his eyes against light and small print. Everything felt too warm and sort of foggy and distant.

He hated to do it, but, an hour before the guys got back, he laid down.

All day long, he’d avoided food, and it killed him to do it because it was _right there_ , but he wasn’t about to waste stuff the guys had bought and paid for.

There was no way he’d be able to skip out on dinner, though. Not when everyone was there, not when they all made a point to eat at roughly the same time, in the same area. They might be spread over the kitchen, table, and living room, but they were all close enough for easy, effortless conversation.

And he had to be with it enough to fake it back.

Laying down and sleeping for an hour wasn’t enough to drive away the headache, but it pushed the nausea back enough that he was able to make it through dinner.

Luck struck again, disturbingly quickly, maybe making up for shitting on him for most of his life. The guys had to pack, so they’d gotten takeout, and they were distracted talking about their travel plans, making sure everything was in order, everyone knew what to do when.

Michael barely had to say anything, barely had to eat anything, was able to slip back to the guest room for an ‘early night’ without anyone so much as raising an eyebrow.

He could risk a couple more hours of sleep, to make sure the guys were in bed. Then, it was back to work.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BACK AFTER ONLY A WEEK!
> 
> Didn't see that coming did you??
> 
> Unfortunately, the vast majority of the super drama is in the next chapter, it's just this chapter was already getting a little long and the pacing is better if I drop a little break here. Plus, I'm going to be at doctor appointments all day and comments make me smile!
> 
> Enjoy!

The first thing he saw on opening his eyes was a pillowcase. Which, after a few heavy blinks, was confusing, because he didn’t remember going back to bed after he started working for the night.

Light was coming in through the window. A lot of light. It had to be at least ten.

Shit.

Pushing himself up onto his elbows landed him with a sharp spike of pain right through his temples. Hissing through his teeth, he waited it out, then moved a little more slowly, forcing himself out of bed, onto his feet.

He was sure the guys were gone, but he had to check.

The house was quiet and still and that was great because just the thought of noise made him want to curl up in a dark corner somewhere.

A piece of paper was pinned to the refrigerator with a magnet of a teapot super-imposed with the Union Flag. Michael hadn’t put his glasses on (because being alive was more or less preferable for him), so he had to get right up close to the note to read it.

Just a general note from the guys, letting him know what time they were getting back on Sunday (late) and an order from Geoff to call Burnie if he needed anything- with 'anything' being in all caps and underlined twice.

Also underneath the magnet were two fifty dollar bills, which he was going to leave there all weekend. He had money. Not a _lot_ , not by any means, but he hadn’t had to spend any of it since he got to Texas. If he was going to be spending actual cash, it wouldn’t be the guys’.

Not that it would be a good idea for him to go out. The nausea had been gone when he woke up, but his head was _killing_ him and dragging it back with a vengeance.

He didn’t have time for this. He’d lost… some amount of time, the night before, he couldn’t remember when he’d stopped working and fallen asleep. There was a vague shadow of a possible memory, of waking up with his head resting on the desk, a warm hand on his shoulder, a low voice that colored the background, then the bed.

But that might have been a dream and he hoped to fuck it was because he did not want to consider what it might have been otherwise or who it was that had found him in the middle of the night.

He needed to do something. Being sick wasn’t something he could afford, not when he had to learn to make videos, not when the guys being gone for four days was the perfect opportunity to do that.

What was good for headaches? Painkillers- but where did the guys keep painkillers? He wasn’t going to go snooping around.

Heat would be good for the pressure. A shower, yeah, that would make him feel better.

He kept his eyes on the floor as he walked. The light coming in the windows and skylights hurt already, looking at it directly was not a fate he wanted to tempt.

One other good thing about the guys being gone- he didn’t have to worry about using too much hot water. The bathroom was filled with steam in under a minute. That was perfect, he could work with that.

It did help, a little. The heat and the steam and the new shampoo he got to try that smelled like mint, good, but not overpowering. His stomach settled and his head throbbed a little less, but the headache didn’t go away.

That was fine. He didn’t need to run any fucking marathons. He just needed to sit at a computer and learn.

 

* * *

 

Michael had figured out very quickly that Gavin didn’t _always_ expect a response to texts, which was why, when his phone vibrated for the first time that day and he picked it up to see a picture of a foot with a busy airport in the background, he was able to set the phone down without giving it any thought at all.

But then it buzzed again, because of course it did. If they were having a layover, Gavin would be texting him.

It was a lot of nonsense, about the flight, the guys, the fact that Ray, while lovely, seemed to get gradually more grumpy as travel went on (that one he replied to with just ‘ _fucking duh_ ’), the options for food in the airport-

Honestly, Gavin seemed to just text the first thought that popped into his mind at any given moment.

Which was really fucking Michael over. Because the interface for the video editing program was dark, and didn’t hurt that much, really, but his phone was bright with tiny text and it was making an already painful headache kind of unbearable.

He’d made some progress, but not enough, not nearly enough. If he could have at least one video done by the time the guys got home, that would be great. That way, if they asked how he was getting on with learning, he’d have _something_ to show for himself.

As of that moment, though, the idea of looking at the screen much longer, the idea of so much as typing out an answer to Gavin’s texts, made his stomach roil. He couldn’t tell if the nausea was from the headache or its own monster, but it really didn’t fucking matter, did it?

He felt hot and sweaty, even though he knew the AC was on. The house had been overly cold before, but never too hot, not ever, and he knew that wasn’t a good sign.

If he worked anymore, he was going to fuck things up and just have to redo it all later, right? He’d have to undo the damage and fix it and that’d take longer, really, wouldn’t it? Because he’d have to go over it all three times.

So. So theoretically, maybe trying to get a few hours’ sleep would be good. It could help. If he slept for the rest of the day, then he’d be able to function better over the weekend, right?

Turning off the monitors and staggering toward the bed made him feel like the worst sort of lazy asshole, but when he woke up, he’d at least be able to fucking _do_ something.

 

* * *

 

If being sick functioned like a rollercoaster, then Michael was fucked.

He hadn’t been to any amusement parks since he was a kid, just barely tall enough to get on the damn roller coaster in the first place, but he still remembered that painfully long climb up the first hill. The first jolt of the cars forward had been exciting, but the eternity it took to reach the top of the hill had given him plenty of time to realize it was a _really_ long fucking way down.

And then, at the very top, there was that pause, where the car was barely nudging over the edge and you knew, just _knew_ the drop was coming and every second felt a million times longer while you tried to remember why you got on the damn thing in the first place and not shit your pants.

Then you dropped and stopped being able to think about anything other than holding on for dear fucking life and hoping that the adrenaline pumping through your veins was wrong and you actually were going to survive the experience.

Problem was, Michael wasn’t sure where, exactly, on the roller coaster he was.

If it had only just started, resting should help and make things calm down, then he could go back to what he was doing. If he was just _barely_ at the top, there might be a little hope.

But when he woke up and everything hurt so much _worse_ than it had when he’d crawled into bed, he was pretty sure he was, as previously noted, _fucked_.

The sun was setting, which was a small relief. Dull light suffused the room, broken only by the computer power light and the screen of his phone.

Right. His phone. It was buzzing on the edge of the table. It was buzzing pretty fast. He was pretty sure it should be making noise if someone was calling him, so probably Gavin was just spamming him with texts?

Just imagining reading text on that screen made his head throb, so he fumbled at the drawer and knocked the phone into it.

It was still buzzing. Louder now, actually, because it could rattle the drawer too. He was going to have to put a shirt or some shit in there to cushion it so it couldn’t do that.

… later.

He’d barely opened his eyes at all, but it was still a relief to close them and press his head back into the pillow. It hurt a little less, when he did, for whatever fucking reason.

In years and years on the streets, he’d only gotten sick a handful of times. And never too bad, except that time his cuts got infected.

So this was pretty bullshit.

At that point he kinda had to admit he was sick. And he _wanted_ to work, he really did, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to, not and get anything of quality done.

That made him feel like a freeloading bitch making excuses, but turning on the computer monitors, getting a faceful of that light? He wanted to work, but he also didn’t want to puke all over the shiny new equipment.

Getting up _alone_ seemed impossible, but his mouth was the fucking Sahara, he was so goddamn _thirsty_. His stomach was a hot wash of acid, but all he could think about was ice water. Everything was too hot and clammy and he just wanted a drink, so fucking bad.

But to get one, he’d have to get up, and he wasn’t totally convinced his head would stay in one piece if he did that.

He just laid there for… a while. Honest to god, he wasn’t sure how long. The light faded more, faded completely. The phone stopped buzzing, eventually.

The computer’s power button was way, way too bright, now.

Finally, he flung back the covers, then paused, shivering as cold air hit his damp skin (had he been sweating?), before slowly forcing himself into a sitting position.

His brain _pulsed_ inside his skull, lurched like it was _pissed_ , and for a second the world sort of tipped sideways.

But then it faded, just a little, just enough that he could push his luck that bit farther and stand.

Everything was kind of wobbly, but not enough he couldn’t walk. Just enough that he was a little unsteady.

Lurching toward the desk, he braced himself against it with one hand and groped blindly behind it until he found the power strip. He clicked it off, and felt guilty at the sudden stop of the computer’s hum. It was bad to do that, he _knew_ it was bad, but turning the monitors on and shutting it down properly- that would have been worse.

There weren’t any lights on in the house, really. It got enough natural light that, during the day, there didn’t need to be.

He could navigate in the dark just fine, was pretty sure the darkness was the only reason he was still on his own two fucking feet.

The kitchen wasn’t far, and thank fuck for that. He staggered towards the cabinet where the cups were, opened it, reached inside blindly, then hesitated when his fingers met glass.

Surely he wasn’t fucking sick enough that he wouldn’t be able to hold a _glass_. But still. Condensation would make it slippery. And if it did break, he sure as shit wouldn’t be able to clean everything up right in the dark, without his glasses.

Fortunately, it only took a little more blind probing for his fingers to hit hard plastic, which was significantly safer.

Ice, huge chunks of ice, landed heavy in the cup when he pressed the button on the front of the fridge, quickly followed by clean, chilled water. Having access to a fridge was fucking _awesome_.

He drank the first cupful all the way down, then the second. Everything in him felt so hot that the cold liquid made him shudder when it hit his stomach. But that was fine. It didn’t hurt and he was so goddamn thirsty.

The third cup, he carried back with him, carefully, to place on the corner of the table by the bed.

The bed that he then collapsed onto. Because somehow, walking to the kitchen and back had wiped him out and his head hurt even _worse_.

But he had water now. Small victories.

 

* * *

 

It may have been five minutes later or five hours, but Michael woke up to darkness.

At first it was the blurry kind of awareness of waking up too slow. But then the pain started to filter in.

His head, of course, his throat, now, dry again and _burning_.

And stomach cramps so bad he barely had time to register them before he was lurching toward the bathroom.

Probably, that was hell on his head, but he barely noticed, over the other pain.

He made it to the bathroom in time, which was a minor miracle. His head made fucking sure he noticed it then, felt like it was squeezing his brain tight with every retch.

The day before, he hadn’t had anything to eat. He hadn’t been able to make himself, not when he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep it down. Having that concern about _water_ hadn’t even occurred to him.

Turned out, his stomach didn’t want fucking _anything_.

He couldn’t see, it was dark and his eyes were streaming, but he didn’t need to be able to for him to know all that came up was water and bile and acid. And it fucking _hurt_.

That was when he figured out that, whatever had made him sick on and off since New York, that wasn’t this. He’d always felt totally better when he’d thrown up then, but this time? He felt a little better, sure, but not enough, not nearly enough.

There was nothing left in his stomach _to_ throw up, but he was doubled over retching for another minute or two anyway.

It was such a good fucking thing the guys were gone. Michael was going to have to wash everything he’d touched for the last week before they got back. Whatever this was, he did _not_ want to accidentally give it to them.

When he was sure it was over, he scrubbed at his face with a washcloth and rinsed out his mouth because he might as fucking well, but he didn’t swallow a single fucking drop of water this time.

Part of him wanted to camp out on the cold bathroom tile, close enough to the toilet that he didn’t have to worry about not making it if (when) he got sick again.

Another part, a part that was much louder, was begging him to get back to the pillows.

The sweat drying on his skin was chilling him anyway. Too much, way too much. He was- he was too cold. Way, way too cold.

A tiny trash can was stashed between the sink and the toilet. He dragged it out and put it beside the bed, close to the headboard.

He’d barely made it in time. If (when) he got sick again, he didn’t want to risk blowing chunks on the carpet. A trashcan, he could clean, throw out the trashbag and fucking hose it down the backyard. Carpet was a whole other animal.

The bed was a weird mix of still body-warm and a little cool because he apparently sweat on it too. But blankets were blankets, even if they were a little damp. You didn’t get picky with blankets.

It didn’t take too long to be warm again. But he started shivering anyway, even though he wasn’t cold, really, not anymore. The tension of it made his head hurt even worse and he _hated_ that.

But it was warm. It was warm and the pillows were soft and, no matter how much he hurt, he had to fall asleep _sometime_.

 

* * *

 

He wasn’t sure if he ever actually slept. Things got sort of… blurry.

It felt like an eternity passed every time he closed his eyes, but when he opened them, it was still dark. Under the blankets was too hot, but if he threw them off he was shivering in seconds.

One time, he blinked, then there was sunlight in the room. Not much, it was morning, but it was kind of a surprise, for the brief second before he squeezed his eyes shut and drew the blankets up over his head.

It was stifling, he’d almost definitely sweat through his clothes and maybe even the sheets, but the light hurt too much for him to even think about moving.

Not that he could really… think. He was too tired for that. For _hours_ he’d been in bed, was _still_ in bed, only half conscious, but he was _so_ tired.

But he still couldn’t _sleep_. Kept resurfacing, looking at the light filtering through the blankets with blurry eyes, then closing them again. He didn’t have any idea of how much time was passing, but he was half convinced the long hours were probably just minutes- couldn’t tell without looking and he was _not_ going to look.

He was thirsty again, but he was pretty sure the only reason his stomach didn’t hurt _worse_ was because there wasn’t actually anything _in it_. Putting that to the test wasn’t high on his priority list.

But. But every so often, he got up and staggered out into the kitchen and got a cup. And there was water in the fridge, but there was also juice, and milk, and red bull, and soda. He was so thirsty he wanted to drink _all_ of it.

Then, right before he actually chose something, he opened his eyes, found himself under the covers again. Every time, he felt himself move and stand and walk, and felt the plastic of a cup bend under his hand when he gripped it, the metal of the fridge door.

And every time, he opened his eyes and was right back in bed.

He’d have been frustrated as fuck, if he had the energy for it.

It took him too fucking long to remember the glass of water by the bed. All the ice had melted and it was lukewarm and tasted stale, somehow, but it was still _water_ and it was _real_ and he tentatively took a few small sips, just enough that his mouth wasn’t so fucking dry anymore.

After a few minutes, when he didn’t feel the urge to eject his intestines, he drank a little more. Eventually, he got through the whole glass.

He hovered between those weird fucking real dreams and reality, for a while. In flashes, he got up, went to the kitchen, checked his buzzing phone, answered texts, tried for a shower- and every time he opened his eyes and was still huddled under the covers.

It was _freezing_ now, when did it get so cold? More blankets, he wanted more blankets, but they were in the closet, was it worth it to get out of bed?

Fucking body made the decision for him. The pressure started building in the back of his chest after about twenty minutes and, in another ten, he was throwing up over the side of the bed, into the waiting trashcan.

What the fuck _was_ this? Some kind of flu? The fucking _plague_?

He was starting to get a little worried. This was the _last_ thing they needed, to possibly get sick, really. And they all lived together and slept in the same bed- it would spread like wildfire.

If he didn’t start getting better soon, enough that he could clean things, he was going to have to do… something. He doubted he could make it as far as the alleyway, but he couldn’t risk giving the guys something like this.

While he was leaning over the side of the bed, breathing slowly, trying not to let the throbbing in his head actually push him out of consciousness, and waiting to see if his body was actually done puking or not, he spotted a splotch of color poking out from under the bed.

Without his glasses on, it took him a minute to realize it was the blanket he’d left under there, that first night.

Finally, a fucking break.

It was close enough for him to grab with the very tips of his fingers. Pulling it up onto the bed with him, he tugged it under the other covers and huddled underneath it. It was dry, and warm, and enough to make him relax, just a little.

He got an hour or two of sleep then, he was pretty sure. When he woke up, the light was dimmer, like the sun was starting to head down.

Things weren’t better. If anything, they were worse. He was getting hunger pains on top of the cramps and nausea, he was thirsty again but knew he could risk any fucking water, and he’d sweat on the new blanket too.

And he could barely surface all the way. He kept falling back into those dreams, where he could move. Where he wandered out into the house and found medicine, where he got a drink and didn’t get sick, and he could feel _all_ of it.

It was like that the whole time the light faded, until the room was completely dark again. And that was a relief, a little one he could barely process when he surfaced long enough to register it was night.

Light hurt so goddamn much, he was stupidly relieved to be able to put his head outside the blankets again, rest it on the pillow and be at least a little less suffocated as the different weird dreams paraded endlessly through his mind like a bad trip, for _hours_.

He knew it wasn’t real, but every time he closed his eyes, he felt it all happen, like he was really doing it, and couldn’t even fucking fathom that it might not be real.

And then he’d open his eyes.

So he could be forgiven for not understanding what was happening at first, when there was a little creak and dim light filled the room.


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHOO 100K! *champagne popper*
> 
> Would you believe that this is the first time I've hit 100K on a story? And we're not even halfway through it? This is insane to me. Proud of myself, though! And thank you all so much for your delightful messages, they were great to read during all my appointments and I'll certainly be rereading them at the appointments over the next few weeks! I couldn't very well leave you all worrying about poor Michael, so why don't we celebrate 100K with approximately 4000 words of SUPERDRAMA??
> 
> Enjoy~

There was a voice, words, alarm. Then there were hands, slipping under the blankets to land on his neck, in his sweat-soaked hair. _Cold_ hands, that he tried to flinch away from, but they just followed him and that was okay because they felt kind of good, actually, after the first shock.

But then they shook him and he decided they could fuck right off. He tried to say that out loud, wasn’t really sure if it worked. Probably shouldn’t be talking to his dreams, anyway. If he didn’t open his eyes, he wouldn’t wake up, might actually fall asleep and stay there, instead of continuing the foggy loop of too-real dreams.

The hand in his hair moved to his forehead, then immediately both were gone, and that was good, that was better. If his dreams stopped making him feel stuff physically, he could actually get some goddamn sleep.

But then it all came back and there was another light, not the overhead light, something dimmer. And something else ran across his forehead and he didn’t actually know what it was. Confused, he forcibly cracked his eyes open and caught sight of glasses and a beard and-

That couldn’t be right. It was just another dream. But… but if that _was…_ if he were _there_ -

Michael tried to move, to open his eyes more than a sliver, but it wasn’t fucking happening. He kept drifting off for seconds, then remembering, suddenly, that something was maybe happening?

There were hands on him again, stealing his blankets, prying them out of his clenched fists (he couldn’t even reach out to pull them back), then tugging at his clothes. He tried to push them away- if someone was really there, they shouldn’t be in the same room, let alone _touching him_ were they _insane_ -?

Air hit his chest, then his legs, the drying sweat immediately making him colder, making him want to get back under the blankets, but the chilled hands were back- one curled around his back and his arm, one on the underside of his knee and-

The world tipped and rolled and there was an intense wave of dull pain from the bruise on his arm, but then he didn’t feel anything at all. Everything around him was blurred and even cloudier than before, just smudges of dark greys and greens- he was floating, he was-

He was actually floating.

Wet. Everything felt wet, and cool, and he didn’t know where he _was_.

The realization brought adrenaline that jolted through his body and he was still out of it and fucking exhausted, but he could _think_ now and he _knew_ he was awake.

His shoulders kept brushing something hard, but his head was higher up and away from all the water and that was good, that was _so_ good, he didn’t need to be swallowing any of it by accident and he didn’t want that cold anywhere near his face.

Opening his eyelids was impossible. He _needed_ to, something was fucking going on, but there was light behind them and his head did not want that.

But that didn’t matter. Either something was happening or he’d started straight up hallucinating and he needed to know which.

Sound filtered back in, slowly. Running water, changing pattern every so often, like the flow was being broken. It rippled around him with matching changes, and it was stupidly relieving that he could feel it after the yawning stretch of blackness he was fighting his way out of.

Whatever was holding his head up was warm, and it wasn’t until it moved slightly that he realized it was a hand.

 _Whose_ hand was a good question, since he vaguely remembered… but that couldn’t be right. That didn’t make any sense.

He needed to see.

Forcing his eyes open was not easy. It didn’t feel like he had any control over them at all. The first few tries, he could only make them twitch, a little. But when he finally managed to crack them open, he forced them to stay that way, despite the fact that his vision was so fucking blurred and cloudy from sleep and a lack of glasses that he could barely see anything but colors. Just that he was in a bathroom of some kind, in a fucking huge hot tub/bath hybrid.

He was close enough to see who was with him, though. A ginger beard was a pretty defining feature.

“Jack?” his voice _hurt_ in his throat and he sounded half-dead… and he was reminded of the last time Jack had found him alone and… he really should be feeling something about that, embarrassment maybe, but there was nothing. Just vague, distant confusion.

Snapping his head around to look at Michael, Jack’s eyes were wide behind his glasses and he said something under his breath that sounded kind of like ‘thank god’, before reaching over to turn off the water.

Wow, it was way more quiet now. And Jack moving his head had made some of the overhead light flash into Michael’s eyes. They closed out of reflex, but he couldn’t really get them back open, after, and everything was starting to feel distant again-

“Michael?” the hand behind his head shifted to one side and Jack’s other hand fell along his jawline. He’d probably have had some words about that, but he was pretty sure there was no fucking way he’d be able to hold his head up on his own, just then. “No, no, no, _Michael_. I need you to stay awake. Come on, open your eyes for me.”

There was some undercurrent to Jack’s voice, beneath the calm that he carried around with him. Something like worry, the gut churning worry that made everything hurt and, fuck, Michael didn’t have to be entirely conscious to know he was a piece of shit for making Jack feel that way.

It took the last of his energy to do it, but he got his eyes open again and Jack’s face swam into view. Behind his glasses, his eyes were tense and anxious, but smoothed a little when he gave a small, careful smile.

“Hey, you with me?”

Talking was the last thing Michael wanted to do, but he wanted Jack worrying about him even _less_ , so he rasped out. “Yeah.”

Jack sighed heavily. “Good, that’s good.” His hand was damp when he moved it up to Michael’s forehead, making him automatically flinch away.

“’s cold,” he managed, feeling only a little guilty. The water wasn’t _cold_ cold. But he still wanted out, still wanted to go back under the blankets. Even lukewarm water was freezing when you were _under it_.

“It’s a little warm, actually, you’re just burning up right now.” But Jack pulled one hand back. Didn’t stop holding Michael’s head, though, which was good because Michael didn’t feel too much like drowning right then. “Hang in there a little longer, we _have_ to get your fever down.”

Fever?

“I don’t…” It sort of made sense, he probably did have a fever, he felt like shit and the temperature thing definitely hadn’t been _good_. But was it really that bad?

A bolt of something like terror knifed through him. If he was _that_ sick, Jack shouldn’t be _anywhere_ near him, let alone so close and actually _touching_ him.

His heart lurched and stuttered and his head throbbed in sharp protest, but none of those things mattered.

“Why are you even- you need to go.” Wait, no. “ _I_ need to go.” That was right. Where were they?

His limbs felt like logs, but he managed to brace his hands along the ridge of the huge tub and push himself into more of a sitting position.

The room around them was, of course, a bathroom, and a _huge_ one at that. It was bright and open, cream colored tile reflecting the light like a _bitch_. A frosted glass window lined the wall next to the tub- and it was pitch black outside.

What was Jack _doing_ there?

Well, he was putting his hands on Michael’s shoulders to keep him from getting out of the water (he didn’t even have to push, their weight _alone_ did the job), but _other_ than that.

“Don’t!” he looked… scared? “Seriously, you’re running a bad fever. You need to stay put a little longer. I’ll go, I’ll get you clothes and towels, but you need to stay here. Can you do that, can you stay here and awake long enough for me to go do that?”

What- why did Jack look _scared_? That wasn’t right. That didn’t make _any_ sense.

But Michael could do what he asked. That should help. Plus, it would get Jack safely _away_ from him.

Staying in the cold water wasn’t something he actually _wanted_ to do, but he gave a shaky nod anyway. Mostly because he needed Jack to _not_ be looking at him like that, but also a little because he wasn’t even sure he could fucking stand.

“Okay.” Jack lifted his hands and he was moving… slowly. Weirdly slowly. “I’ll be right back. Don’t fall asleep, yeah?”

And then he left and Michael slumped against the back of the tub and tried not to shudder as the water engulfed his chest again. _Fuck_ , it was cold. Too cold for him to fall asleep, really, even though he was fucking _wiped_.

For some reason, it was only _then_ that it occurred to him that Jack must have fucking carried his ass here. There was no way he would have been able to even pretend to help by walking. And he sure as shit hadn’t _undressed_ himself.

Speaking of, a quick check confirmed he was still wearing boxers, which was a fucking relief. This whole ordeal was going to be humiliating enough, once he could think again, without having to deal with knowing Jack had seen his dick.

And he was pretty sure Jack was here alone, which… why? _How_? Where were the other guys? Had Michael fucking missed a day or two somewhere, what was going _on_?

It didn’t make any sense. But if it was one of those weird fucking dreams, it was the longest, most intense one he’d had yet.

Which was bad, probably.

His eyelids started drooping again, so he forced himself into more of a sitting position to stay awake. There was an empty cup on the edge of the tub, one of the big plastic ones, and he reached out to grab it.

The cold was leeching all the warmth out of his body, but it could help keep him awake. And he knew he’d been covered in sweat before, and his hair was still damp with something that most likely wasn’t water. So he filled the cup and poured it over his head and holy _shit_ that was cold.

A shudder ripped through him, but he was a little more awake, so he did it again. He was so tired his hands shook and he needed both of them to lift the cup when it was full, but he wasn’t falling asleep and rinsing off felt good, even if the temperature was a kind of torture.

Plus, if he washed off as much as he could, there was less of a chance Jack could catch something from him. Not _much_ , maybe, but he needed to do everything he could to keep Jack from getting sick too.

He was soaked and shivering by the time Jack came back, but he was cleaner and he hadn’t fallen asleep.

Jack had a couple of really fluffy towels and, on top of them, the clothes Ryan had leant Michael that first night. He’d washed them with his new things and put them on the dresser to make sure to remember to give them back, but that hadn’t actually worked and it looked like Jack had just grabbed the first things he’d seen rather than start rummaging around in the drawers.

That was fine, he didn’t blame him. He’d just have to wash the clothes again, maybe a couple of times to make sure they were really, really clean, after all this. But he knew they were warm and comfortable, if too big, and that was all he really cared about.

After setting the small mountain of cloth next to the bathtub, Jack crouched down next to him, looked at his dripping hair, and frowned so quickly that Michael almost thought he’d imagined it. Then he leaned over and pulled the plug out of the drain and thank _god_ Michael could get out of the fucking water.

“You going to be good on your own for a few minutes?” Jack asked, barely audible over the sound of water draining.

Deeply fucking grateful that Jack didn’t plan on hovering while he got dressed, Michael nodded again and he went.

There was something off about him. Well, there was something off about the whole situation and Michael was apparently running a fever bad enough that Jack had felt the need to have him sit in cold water for fucking ever, so it could just be that.

Felt like there was more to it, though.

He sat there until the water was all the way gone and somehow, that was even _colder_. But it took that long for him to get the energy to lift himself off onto the rim of the bath. He had to sit _there_ , breathing _way_ too hard for that one thing, for a few minutes before peeling off his soaked boxers and dropping them in the empty tub with a wet smack.

But then he got to reach down and take one of the towels and wrap it around his shoulders and that was _so_ much better. Enough that he took a second to just huddle under it and enjoy not being so cold.

Couldn’t do that long, though. No telling when Jack was going to come back. So he dried off as best he could and pulled on Ryan’s by-now familiar clothes. They were warm and dry too, and that was awesome. That was so great.

When he pulled the T-shirt on, he caught sight of his arm. The long red line of the healing cut was still there, but the butterfly stiches were all gone. They’d been there the day before… had he lost them, at some point over the last few days?

He was starting to feel slow again, but he forced his sluggish limbs to keep moving. Leaning down, he wrung out the boxers and wrapped them up in the damp towel so they wouldn’t drip anywhere. He took the other towel and wrapped it around his shoulders to keep his hair from getting the T-shirt too wet. Water probably wouldn’t hurt it or anything, but he didn’t want to test it.

Then, with a bracing breath, he swung his legs over the edge of the bath, pressed his feet to the cold tile, and stood.

It was a close thing, but he didn’t land on either his face or his ass, so he called it a win. The world took a few seconds to stop blurring around him before he could shamble unsteadily toward the door.

He already had a hunch about where he was, but he needed to check for sure.

Jack had closed the door behind him, but it wasn’t locked, which was nice because Michael wasn’t sure how great his coordination was, right then.

Beyond the door was pretty much what he’d expected. A big room, with an _insanely_ large bed dominating the middle of it. There was some other furniture, a gigantic flatscreen mounted to the wall, a set of windows that looked out on the backyard, but it was the bed that more or less confirmed that he was still in the house.

It was the guys’ room.

He hadn’t been in here before, had deliberately avoided it, and he sort of wanted to run out of it, but he was half convinced he’d drop dead if he even _tried_ to run, so he shuffled toward the door and the familiar hall he could see beyond it.

Maybe three steps later, gravity stopped being a thing and the world blurred more than it was already and he had stagger the two steps to the bed and sit before he could fall.

It didn’t matter what he did or didn’t want to do, he couldn’t move. He had to lean forward, hang his head until it was almost touching his knees, and just focus on breathing until the darkness hovering on the edges of his vision backed off, a little.

Good thing about the clean clothes and the bath, but he needed to _move_ , before he contaminated the guys’ room any more than he already had.

The mattress was inviting and the blankets looked warm and he really just wanted to burrow underneath them and go to sleep, or maybe die, but he knew he couldn’t. Convincing his body to get up and walk instead of lay down and pass out was… practically impossible.

And then Jack was there, crouching in front of him to try and catch his eye, carefully taking hold of his elbows through the towel he’d wrapped around himself.

Jack was saying something, but it was kind of hard to focus on that. On the plus side, he helped him stand and Michael didn’t hit the floor like a corpse when he tried to walk again. And when Jack put an arm carefully around his shoulders and started walking, the towel blocked him from touching too much, which hopefully meant he was at least a _little_ protected.

It was nice, listening to Jack’s voice. Familiar. He was pretty sure Jack knew he wasn’t getting the actual words, but the sound was consistent and level anyway.

Making it to the guest room felt like walking the entire distance from Jersey to Texas. When the fuck did his body get so goddamn _heavy_? How did he walk around _normally_ , if it felt like this?

When they finally made it and his bare feet hit the carpet, he almost wanted to cry with relief. He let Jack take the damp, bundled-up towel out of his arms and the other one from around his shoulders, but then he took the last couple of steps to collapse face-first onto the bed.

He’d done it, made it back to bed, he could rest now, it’d be warm and he wouldn’t have to get up again and-

The pillow cases smelled clean.

It filtered through the fog of his brain, the scent of the detergent, the cool, almost crisp feeling of clean cloth under his cheek, under his hands. A faint, perfume-y smell, _nothing_ like what it should have smelled like after two (three?) days of him sweating into it.

Reluctantly looking up, Michael saw that the sheets and blankets were all different than the ones that had been there the last few days and had been folded back, clearing the area he’d collapsed onto. Jack must have taken the gross, sweaty covers off the bed and replaced them when he left Michael’s worthless ass in the master bath.

Why the fuck would he do that? He didn’t have to do that. He shouldn’t have done that.

Speaking of Jack, he hadn’t left, was saying Michael’s name, trying to get him to look over, which he did, after a second.

A little bit of the stress had gone out of Jack’s expression, which was good, but a lot of it was still there, which was fucked up and Michael hated it. “When was the last time you had anything to eat or drink?”

Stomach twisting at just the _mention_ of food, Michael cringed involuntarily. And it took him a second, he had to think. There’d been so _many_ dreams, he wasn’t sure what was real, but he could guess.

“This morning?” he managed, somehow.

Going from Jack’s expression, that wasn’t a good answer. “Did you keep it down?”

He didn’t want to talk anymore. Shaking his head wasn’t super clear when it was half-buried in a pillow, but Jack seemed to get the message. And didn’t like it.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, turned, and left.

It wasn’t good he was mad, but it was good he was gone. Both because he needed to not get sick and because now Michael could _sleep_.

 

* * *

 

He’d closed his eyes for maybe four seconds before Jack was back with a hand on his shoulder. Ignoring him didn’t work, which was a damn fucking shame, because, when Michael opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was the huge bottle of Gatorade in Jack’s hand.

Whatever his expression was must have been pretty dramatic, because Jack’s hand tightened on his shoulder for a second before letting go entirely.

“You _need_ to drink something, Michael. You’re dehydrated and running a fever, it’ll just get worse if you don’t.”

Michael shook his head again, closed his eyes, tried to burrow into the pillow. “Won’t work… won’t stay down.”

Jack must have leaned down, because he was at Michael’s eyelevel when he looked again. “You need to try, it’s better to drink something and throw it up than not drink anything.” Something in his face shifted. “I’m serious. If you don’t drink something soon, you’re going to need IV fluids. And that means I take you to a hospital.”

Michael’s entire body went rigid.

“ _Fuck you_.” The words were out before he could stop them, spat with so much venom he was even surprised at himself. He was going to regret it later, knew it already. But the thought of hospitals, doctors with needles and drugs, strangers- when he was like _this_? Adrenaline hit his bloodstream so hard it made him dizzy.

“Michael.” Jack’s face had shifted back, like he knew he’d made his point. “Please. Just try.”

Well. He didn’t have much of a choice, did he?

He hated moving. He hated feeling all his muscles strain with just the effort of pushing himself onto his elbows, then higher, until he could finally sit up. He hated Jack too, for a second.

But then he glanced down, toward the floor, to make sure the trash can was still there, for when he got sick.

It was. And it was clean and empty, with a new bag and everything.

Guilt made his breath hitch in his throat. If Jack had asked him to do _anything_ in that second, he would’ve done it.

But Jack just pressed the bottle into his hands gently, and didn’t pull back until he was sure Michael had a decent grip and wouldn’t drop it. Which was smart, because it took him a second.

At least it wasn’t cold. It was lukewarm, lemon lime, and hurt when it hit his empty stomach. He hadn’t realized how hot he was until he started shivering from it, was _really_ glad it hadn’t been cold.

Jack didn’t say a word, but he also didn’t leave. Just stood there, waiting.

Michael managed half the bottle before he felt too full, like he’d throw up just from that if he drank any more.

He was a little scared it wouldn’t be enough, that Jack would insist, but it must have been okay because Jack took the bottle and lid when he fumbled a little too much trying to get them lined up right and closed it before setting it next to the bed. The empty cup from earlier was gone. What all had Jack done while Michael hadn’t been there?

“Okay great, that’s great. Thank you, go back to sleep.”

Michael knew he _should_ say something, apologize or thank _Jack_ or _something_. But he couldn’t think enough to come up with the right words and Jack was still _looking_ at him.

So he dropped back to the pillows and ignored the harsh knot in his throat when blankets settled over him and he smelled the detergent again.


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *pokes head in*
> 
> So I heard you like h/c?

Everything hurt.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been awake, there’d been an eternity of just laying there and letting the pain wash over him in waves before he’d even been conscious enough to realize it.

It was still dark, but there was a faint light throwing dim shadows on the walls. He wasn’t too sure where it was coming from and didn’t much care.

He just wanted everything to stop.

His head wasn’t throbbing, it was spiking, lances stabbing into his temples and sending out pulses of pain. Air burned as it rasped through his throat, and he wasn’t sure if that was a symptom of whatever this was or if it was just because he’d fallen asleep with his mouth open, but it still _hurt_.

The nausea had been inevitable, and had built to the point that it felt like it would spill over any second and he’d be able to go throw up, but it wasn’t, it was just hovering there, making his guts cramp and skin start to get sticky with sweat.

Even his _muscles_ fucking hurt, that dull, painful ache that came after a bad injury. A broken bone, or a deep cut, or a bad fall. There were a million ways to get that ache and he thought he’d experienced them all already, but that was before this.

There was something important he was forgetting, something he desperately needed to remember. But he couldn’t get there.

Dreams kept materializing behind his eyes, even though he knew he was awake. Nonsensical illusions that fell apart when he tried to understand them, leaving him with an empty space where fear had been.

And it _was_ fear. Distant feelings of being small and alone and trapped. Running from some vague threat and never making progress. Blurs of figures that never came near him, but he _knew_ , in that dream-spawned certainty, that they were going to hurt him.

At one point, he heard noises in the room with him. He was still half in a dream, barely aware he was even _in_ a real room in the first place, so he couldn’t move, but he knew it was getting _closer_ -

His hair was pushed away from his forehead so something could run gently over it. There was a faint beep, a discontent noise, then the touch vanished and he curled into a tight ball, trying to fall back asleep.

The dreams were awful, but they weren’t as bad as being awake, as lying there wondering whether or not he was dying.

 

* * *

 

Jack was there.

It took him way, way too long to realize it, but Jack was in the armchair in the corner and had probably been there all night. He honestly didn’t know, but it seemed like something Jack would do.

He couldn’t look over, or move, or do anything that would let Jack know he was awake. That was fucking difficult, given the fact that his body was self-destructing or something, but he didn’t know what he was supposed to say or do.

Why was Jack _there_? He hadn’t seen any of the other guys, was pretty sure the faint light coming through the window meant it was Saturday, not Sunday or, fuck, _Monday_. Jack shouldn’t have come back until tomorrow night. There was no reason for him to come back early.

But here he was.

Maybe it was imagination, or another one of those weird fucking dreams, but he could swear he felt Jack’s eyes on him, watching him constantly.

He wanted to just go back to sleep until this was all over, or at the very least go into the bathroom and force himself to throw up, so maybe he _could_ relax enough to sleep. But if he was awake, Jack would want to talk to him. And Jack being on the opposite side of the room was probably the best he could hope for, as far as not getting him sick.

So he stayed there, under the blankets, trying to keep still and quiet, to fall asleep, for what felt like hours. It never really got bright outside, so either it was cloudy or the sun had been hovering just under the horizon for most of the morning.

Finally, he heard a faint buzz, then another. There was a second where he wasn’t sure what was going to happen, then he heard Jack stand and leave the room, pulling the door closed softly behind him.

He waited for the first muffled greeting to filter through the wall, then he was practically falling out of bed, lurching toward the bathroom like the undead. The back of the computer chair was part support, part death trap, what with the spin, but it was still better than whatever the fuck standing up straight would have done to his head.

Technically, he didn’t _have_ to get out of bed. That trashcan was still there. But he was pretty sure Jack would clean it and that was just not allowed, no matter how much his head spiked when he moved.

At first he wasn’t sure if his body would actually let him throw up without him forcing the issue, but something about the combination of his head trying to implode and the muscle memory of what hovering over the toilet _meant_ had him doubled over and retching in seconds.

Not that there was a lot for him to throw up. Gatorade and bile, and not much of it. Pretty soon he was left kneeling on the tile and dry heaving, which was almost _worse_ because he was sore enough from being sick yesterday and the day before. The aching muscles in his stomach seized again and again and he just wanted it to _stop_ but it _wouldn’t_.

He heard the door open and took the second between that and hearing footsteps coming his way to acknowledge how fucked he was.

“Aw, _shit_.”

Well, he couldn’t exactly disagree with _that_.

It was like déjà vu. Him bruising his knees against the bathroom tile, Jack shuffling around, turning on the faucet for a second, then coming his way.

Just like the first time, the cold washcloth against the back of his neck helped chase the end of the nausea away, let him sit back and breathe.

Unlike the first time, he tried to put as much distance between him and Jack as possible.

“Michael?”

He didn’t get far, the bathroom wasn’t very big and Jack was between him and the exit. But he _had_ to do what he could.

“Stay the fuck away from me.” The sound of his own voice surprised him, even though it was almost too quiet to hear. It was strained and broken, but he hadn’t lost it, not yet, anyway.

Between the water in his eyes from being sick and the general blurriness of not having his glasses on, he couldn’t really see Jack’s face that well. But his voice sounded stricken.

“Michael, I’m _sorry_ , but it was either that or I take you to the hospital and I didn’t-”

Shaking his head was a terrible idea that made him gag and have to double over and breathe through his teeth until the urge to be sick again passed. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jack start forward, then stop himself, which was kind of weird, but he ignored it and just pushed the washcloth harder against the back of his neck. Cold drops of water slipped under the collar of Ryan’s shirt, down his spine, to make breathing a little easier.

“You might _catch this_ , dumbass.” He wasn’t mad about the bath or the Gatorade or whatever Jack thought he was mad about. How was he not _worried_ about this? “You need to leave me alone.”

There. He’d said something, now Jack would keep his distance and-

“ _That’s_ why you want me to back off? You’re worried you might be _contagious_?” And now Jack sounded… pissed?

Oh _fuck_.

Jack didn’t back off at all, he came _forward_. Michael abandoned his grip on the washcloth to try and push himself away, but he didn’t have anywhere to go, he’d already backed himself into a corner and now Jack was practically on top of him.

“You’re not contagious, you fucking idiot. There’s nowhere you could’ve _caught_ anything, you don’t _leave the house_. The only way you could have caught something is if one of us brought it home and none of us have been sick. But according to _Ryan_ , the light’s been on in your room every night for the last _week_.”

Michael could hardly see, but meeting Jack’s accusing gaze made him shift, duck his head, try and avoid it. Hands, cool and firm, cupped either side of his face and forced him to look up.

“You’ve been through so fucking much your body’s held together with stubbornness and nothing else. You needed to rest, but you stopped sleeping and I don’t know _why_. I don’t _care_ why. You might’ve been okay if you’d just rested when the warning signs started up, but you didn’t and I got home last night and for a second I thought you were _dead_.”

Jack had a surprisingly strong grip, Michael couldn’t move an inch even when he tried to flinch away.

“I don’t understand how someone who worked as hard as you did to survive could _hurt_ themselves so much.” _Fuck_ , he wasn’t pulling any punches. “Even if you had the flu and _were_ contagious, you’d still need someone to take care of you and _any single one of us_ would do it.”

Michael squeezed his eyes shut, trying to pull back, away from the words, away from how much he’d fucked up. Jack followed him, though, and didn’t ease up in the slightest.

“Damn it, Michael, we _want_ to help you. We don’t want you hurting or stressed or whatever went wrong. I don’t know what’s going on in your head, but you fucking listen to me. I’m _not_ leaving.” His grip shifted, went softer, but didn’t go away. “Do you hear me? You can bitch, you can yell at me, you can do whatever you want, but _I’m not going to leave you_. This whole situation is fucked, but it’s happening and like hell am I going to leave you _alone_. You’re not getting rid of me, so you might as well let me help.”

Michael’s lungs were broken. He was breathing, and breathing, but it didn’t feel like he was getting any _air_. Fingers slid gently down his face, to his neck. A thumb brushed absently along his jaw and it felt like he was _dying_.

“Okay? _Let me help_.”

Michael didn’t know what to _do_. He was getting a little air, but not enough, and he didn’t know what to _do_ or _say,_ he didn’t know what Jack wanted from him at _all_.

Jack didn’t let go of him, didn’t say anything else or try to make him open his eyes. Not that Michael really wanted him to do anything one way or another. What _could_ he want? Where were they supposed to go from here?

They must have sat there in silence for minutes while Michael caught his breath before Jack asked, quietly, “Does it hurt?”

Michael want to ask what Jack meant, his body or the verbal evisceration, but he just dipped his head, because the answer was ‘yes’ either way.

“What hurts?”

He couldn’t help the exhausted scoff at that. “Everything?”

“Okay. Do you want to go back to bed?”

 _God_ yes.

Another nod and Jack’s hands slid away from his face, down to his arms, then he was being pulled to his feet. The angle was awkward, made him stagger a bit, but he wasn’t even a little scared of falling, even when his headache spiked and the world tilted alarmingly. Jack had a solid grip.

He started to turn to pick up the washcloth he’d dropped, didn’t want to leave it there, but Jack’s grip didn’t let up and he found himself moving forward instead. Out of the bathroom, away from the conversation that was going to be looping in his head for the next eternity.

Everything might be awful and the humiliation and guilt were going to catch up to him like a motherfucker, but he was still relieved when they made it to the bed. It was safe there, and comfortable. Maybe if he went into a coma, things would be less shit when he woke up.

He didn’t get to put that to the test nearly as quickly as he wanted to. He’d barely sat on the edge of the bed before Jack passed him the half-full bottle of Gatorade.

“I know it sucks to keep being sick, but it’s still be-”

Jack cut himself off abruptly when Michael silently uncapped the bottle and drank everything that was left in it.

It was probably a surprise to him, after Michael had bitched about it so much the first time. But that was before.

He’d fucked up. He’d fucked up _really_ bad. It hadn’t even occurred to him until Jack said it, but this whole mess was _his_ fucking fault. Whatever reason Jack had needed to come home, now he was stuck trying to keep Michael alive.

It was another thing on the mountain-sized pile that he was going to have to make up for, have to pay back.

Jack shouldn’t have to hover around him, take _care_ of him. That was fucking stupid. But he was pretty sure saying that to him was just going to make things worse.

The least he could do was shut the fuck up and do what he was told, so Jack could get back to his own life and quit fucking babysitting him.

This needed to be over. Jack didn’t deserve this. Michael didn’t _care_ how many times he got sick, if it helped end this faster.

Jack was mad at him. But he was still helping him. Because that was the kind of person he was. He’d help anybody. And Michael’d trapped him in this situation.

Surprised or not, Jack got over it fast. He reached out and Michael couldn’t help it, he flinched. There was a split second pause, but Jack continued before Michael could apologize, pressing a palm firmly against his forehead.

It was hard to stay still, to not duck away. He clenched his hand a little too tightly around the empty Gatorade bottle and the plastic crackled loudly, making him wince. But Jack just took the bottle with his free hand and tossed it into the trashcan at his feet without looking away from Michael’s face, which was a level of intensity that made him want to hide under the bed.

“I know you’re nauseous,” he said, keeping his voice low as he _finally_ pulled his hand back, which was fucking saintly of him. “And your fever hasn’t gone down any farther. What else is wrong?”

Unsticking his tongue from the roof of his mouth to answer that question took Michael a few tries.

“My head,” he admitting, hating himself a little. “And. Just-” there was no way to say it without sounding like a whiny bitch, but goddammit, he _had_ to tell the truth, wasn’t going to ditch his decision just because he was _embarrassed_. “Everything _hurts_.”

He tried to say it under his breath, like it wasn’t a big deal, but Jack frowned. “Like muscle pain or different?”

 _Maybe_ muscle pain? But it felt like the ache went all the way to his _bones_. Like it was in his fucking _fingernails_. He looked down, at the soft fabric covering his knees, and shrugged.

After a second, Jack’s hands came back into his field of view. His fingers curled around Michael’s left arm, lifting it carefully.

“Does this make it worse?” he asked, moving his hands along the exposed skin, sort of rubbing circles into it, tightening his grip just a little here and there, gradually increasing pressure.

It felt _good_. Was this what a massage would feel like? Michael didn’t understand it, but it sure as shit didn’t _hurt_.

“No,” he said, after realizing he’d been quiet and staring for _way_ too long.

“Good.” Jack lowered his arm back to where it had been before, let go, and he tried not to miss the touch. Fuck, Jack was just trying to figure out his symptoms, nothing else. Michael shouldn’t miss the touch, shouldn’t have _enjoyed_ it so much. It was fucked up. _He_ was fucked up. “I’m going to get you some medicine, I’ll be right back.”

It was some real bullshit that just sitting upright on the edge of the bed waiting for Jack to come back took more effort than anything else he’d ever done. He just wanted to lay down and _sleep_ , but he couldn’t, not yet.

Soon, though. Soon, he could sleep, and Jack wouldn’t have to worry about him. And sleep would help him get better. The more he slept, the sooner Jack would be able to do whatever he wanted.

He couldn’t think about still being sick when the other guys got back. Fuck, _one_ was enough, he didn’t want to think about what the rest of them might do, if they were there.

Jack came back with a bottle of pills and a cup of water- _ice_ water, which Michael got more excited about than he wanted to admit.

He didn’t know what the pills were, didn’t care. Just swallowed them and drank probably more of the water than he should have. Ideally, he’d wouldn’t get sick until _after_ the medicine was already in his blood, so he shouldn’t be pushing it.

The cold of the water made him shudder, and Jack immediately asked, “Do you want more blankets?”

He wanted to say no, didn’t want Jack to get him anything else. The sweltering heat would probably be back sooner rather than later anyway.

But he _was_ cold. And if he started shivering and Jack saw it-

Not worth it.

“Please?” he tried, face burning. He didn’t want Jack to think he didn’t realize how much trouble he was putting him through.

Jack pulled a couple more blankets down from the top shelf of the closet, but didn’t hand them to Michael when he reached for them. He shook them out, laid them over the covers on the bed already by himself, ignoring the ways Michael tried to get him to stop without actually asking him to.

It really was like back at the hotel. This was the _second_ time Jack had done something like this. How had Michael put him in a situation like this _twice_?

“If you can sleep more, you should,” Jack said, looking him in the eye in a way that made him swallow hard. “It’ll make you feel better.”

Michael had _no_ problem getting under the blankets. They were heavy and warm and he was _tired_. If he fell asleep before the nausea came back, maybe he could sleep through the worst of it.

“Do you need anything else?”

Fuck no.

He shook his head, rolled over onto his side so he wasn’t facing Jack anymore, and pulled the covers up to his ears. He didn’t want to talk anymore. Didn’t want Jack to have to do anything else to for him.

Besides. He was pretty sure Jack was going to stay in the room. He didn’t _want_ him to. Jack shouldn’t have to keep watch over him or what the fuck ever. But he was pretty sure he would anyway.

Maybe he’d go do something else, though, if he thought Michael was asleep.

A faint sigh came from where Jack stood and Michael tried not to tense, not to let the guilt of somehow upsetting Jack _again_ get to him.

Then a large hand rested on his head, just for a bit. A second of warmth, light pressure smoothing down his hair.

“Get some rest, Michael.”

Swallowing hurt and he fucking deserved it. Deserved a lot worse.

How in the ever loving _fuck_ was he supposed to make up for this?


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is this, the third week in a row I've updated on time? It's almost like I'm snowed in again! (god, I fucking wish)
> 
> I love you all and your precious comments, they make me so happy. So many people frustrated with Michael! All in due time, my friends. All in due time~
> 
> Enjoy!

There was a nice, long blur after that.

Time sort of stopped being a thing, after he fell asleep. He kept getting half-formed ideas of what was happening.

Most of the pain was staying at a dull ache, which was probably the medicine at work. It was probably that keeping the dreams mostly at bay, too. No getting up and walking around and feeling better, then waking up feeling worse than ever. Just endless, faint impressions of unimportant things.

At first, he kept waking up, feeling like he’d been asleep for hours and hours each time. But the light in the room hadn’t changed, and he definitely didn’t _feel_ rested.

Then he blinked and the light was way dimmer and he was clumsily fighting the heavy blankets tangled around his arms. Sweat was making them stick to his skin and they felt five times heavier than he knew they were, so throwing them to one side was a million times harder than it should have been.

He was pretty sure he missed the trash can at first, but he didn’t get a chance to check because his eyes were so watery and then Jack was there. Michael was saying something, didn’t even know what he was saying, apologies, hopefully, because that was gross, as he was half-eased, half-pushed back into a reclining position on the bed.

Jack said something back, but Michael was barely conscious and couldn’t make out more than the tone. He didn’t sound angry, though, so maybe it wasn’t too bad? Didn’t even sound annoyed, his voice had a lull to it, something almost careful.

Michael wanted to help, somehow, wasn’t really sure what was wrong or what he could do, just that he shouldn’t be laying around, needed to think. But fighting for full awareness was like trying to wade through tar and he didn’t even know Jack had left the room until he was back.

He really wished Jack would stop trying to get him to drink stuff. It wasn’t like he didn’t understand he needed to be doing as much of what Jack wanted as possible, at this point, but there was always that moment of sheer fucking relief after being sick, where it didn’t hurt anymore.

But again, he’d kind of forfeited the right to have a say in that when he landed Jack (and himself) in this situation. So he didn’t object when he was presented with more Gatorade (though he did fight to be allowed to _hold_ it, because it didn’t matter if he was actively dying, he was not going to go there), even though he sorely wanted to.

At least the medicine seemed to be doing its job. The pain didn’t leave completely, but it stayed at a bearable level, even though he was halfway sitting up so he didn’t choke while trying to drink. In fact, the worst pain was coming from his abs, of all places. Probably from throwing up so much, but it seemed kinda ridiculous, given everything else.

The degree of pride he felt after downing the whole bottle was really fucking stupid, but it was more than he’d been able to do yesterday.

In the back of his mind, something played, the same feeling he got when he walked into a room and forgot what he’d gone there for, even though he’d been thinking about it two seconds ago.

He wanted to ask Jack about it, but he couldn’t really figure out how and Jack was talking quietly at him as he sank down further into the pillows. Then the covers were pulled up to his neck, which probably meant Jack wanted him to sleep, so whatever he was forgetting couldn’t be _that_ big a deal.

 

* * *

 

The next time he opened his eyes, it was dark, which was REALLY fucking disorienting because it hadn’t felt like he’d slept long at all, just a few minutes. But it was dark, except for very faint blue light, and Michael didn’t have to roll over to know it was Jack’s phone.

Fuck. How late was it? Jack should probably be in bed, not staying up watching him.

He needed to find a way to convince Jack that he was _fine_ by himself, if only so the other man would leave him alone long enough to take care of _himself_. The issue was Jack would probably think Michael was trying to get rid of him so he could go back to work or juggle knives or some shit, whatever self-destructive things the guys seemed to think he did in his spare time.

For a second, he closed his eyes to think about it. Then he opened them and the room was light again.

What.

Had it really been dark? Thinking back just turned up a massive blank spot in his head, interspersed with faint maybe-memories-maybe-dreams of Jack poking at him or making him drink things. It was possible he’d thrown up again, maybe twice. How fucked up was it that he couldn’t actually remember?

But as he was laying there… nothing actually hurt. Everything felt sort of… fragile. Like it _would_ hurt if he dared to move, but he was safe, for the moment.

Unfortunately, he also really, _really_ had to piss, so at least Jack’s quest to keep him hydrated seemed to have worked.

Bracing himself, he levered himself up onto his elbows, then into a sitting position. Heavy blankets pooled around him, but his head only gave a twinge of protest. After the stabbing pains of the last few days, it was easy enough to ignore.

The silence unnerved him though. He’d been expecting Jack to be on him the second it looked like he was awake.

But when he looked up, over at the chair where Jack was, he was surprised to find he was… asleep. Head resting against the back of the chair, phone held loosely in his lap, eyes closed, Jack was dead asleep.

Weird feelings tumbled through his chest. It was good Jack was sleeping, but bad he’d fallen asleep there, bad he’d passed out without meaning to. Fuck, had he even _slept_ that first night he got back? Why hadn’t Michael been able to get with it enough to have Jack go get some rest in an actual bed, if he _had_ woken up in the middle of the night and it wasn’t actually still the same day?

How had everything gotten so fucking weird?

On one hand, Jack should have a chance to get some actual rest, in a _bed_. On the other, if Michael woke him up, he’d probably just stay on Michael’s case until one of them passed out again.

Not that Michael should _need_ to sleep for the next week or so, he’d slept so much the last few days, but he wasn’t sure how long he’d be able to get away with not being in bed, as far as Jack was involved.

A thought crossed his mind and he _really_ didn’t want to know the answer to it, but he looked anyway and- yup. Trash can was clean, empty, carpet was clean, if a shade darker than usual and smelling like cleaning supplies.

If Jack hadn’t spent so long trying to keep him alive, he’d probably have died of humiliation.

Quietly, he slipped onto the floor and made his way to the bathroom and sweet, sweet relief.

After, he looked at himself in the mirror and… eugh.

He looked like a fucking corpse. His skin was even paler than usual, the circles under his eyes were so dark it almost looked like he’d gotten jumped again. Shit, it even looked like he’d lost weight.

Lifting up his shirt confirmed that, yup. The little bit he’d filled out over the last couple of weeks was gone.

Fan-fucking-tastic. No wonder Jack had pitched a fit.

Speaking of… he was _starving_. There wasn’t any nausea, not yet anyway. He was pretty sure he could get away with eating something.

Jack was still asleep when he paced lightly back through the guest room. The door to the hall was cracked, so he was able to slip out of the room and close it behind him almost completely silently.

After waiting a few seconds to make sure he hadn’t woken Jack up on accident, he turned toward the kitchen.

Probably one of the things keeping his headache at a low throb instead of crippling pain was that it was cloudy outside. The guys’ house had enough skylights and windows that it didn’t need lights on during the day, so it being cloudy meant he could see fine (well, as fine as was possible without his glasses), but the light didn’t hurt at all.

When he opened the refrigerator door, the first thing he saw was a carton of eggs. The omelet he’d had that first morning flashed through his mind’s eye with no small amount of temptation, but he wasn’t a fucking idiot. He hadn’t had anything solid in… three or four days? Something like that? He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but way too long for something like that. Plus, he didn’t have the first fucking idea how to cook.

He kind of wanted to, though. Both because his stomach was starting to make obnoxious grumbling noises and because it would be nice if he could make something for Jack too. But the risk of burning down the house trumped that a million times over, so he just took out some butter and set it aside.

Toast was good. It was what they always said to eat when you were sick, right? If he handled that okay, _then_ he’d think about the rest of the contents of the fridge.

At least toast was easy. The bread was in the pantry, the toaster was on the counter, all he had to do was insert tab A into slot B and push down the lever.

It was when he was rummaging around in the silverware drawer for a butter knife, the sound of metal clinking against itself drowning out the distant shuffles that should have warned him, that Jack practically fucking _materialized_ on the other side of the bar.

Michael didn’t jump, which deserved some fucking recognition, as far as he was concerned, but he bit his tongue on the thought when he got a good look at Jack.

“You look like shit,” he blurted out, not meaning to, especially since his fucking traitorous voice came out as a barely audible rasp.

Great. So he was standing in the middle of the kitchen, in borrowed clothes, barefoot, with a butter knife in one hand, after having slept for maybe a few hours, maybe a day, and he’d just insulted the guy who’d spent the last however-long trying to keep him alive.

Fucking great.

Jack didn’t seem to take it personal, though. He just scrubbed at his eyes with a hand and braced the other against the bar. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

Michael blinked slowly at him. Was that… really a question? Had Jack really wanted Michael to _wake him up_ so he could… what? Keep hovering and doing everything for him? Had he actually _expected_ Michael to be that selfish?

“Because you were asleep?” And, yeah, he deserved that sharp look for not really answering the question, but what the fuck _else_ was he supposed to say? “You still look tired. You should sleep. I’m not gonna fucking drop dead on you.”

“ _You_ shouldn’t even be out of bed-”

The toaster popping behind him almost made Michael rocket into orbit. Which was fucking mortifying enough without the look that flickered across Jack’s face. He wasn’t sure if it was that or if he still had a fever, but his face was hot when he stiffly turned back to pluck the steaming bread out of the toaster.

He almost burned his fingertips on it, but that was fine. It was fucking perfect, as per usual in this house. Every other toaster in Michael’s past either burned the shit out of stuff, didn’t heat it enough, or somehow _both_ , at the same time, one side charcoal, the other soft and pristine as it had been when it was pulled out of the package.

But nope, this toast was perfectly golden fucking brown. On both sides. Because of course it fucking was.

“You should’ve told me you were hungry.” Jack’s voice was softer now, less accusing. Because Michael had jumped at a fucking _toaster_. “I could’ve brought you something, you didn’t have to get it yourse-”

Only sheer fucking willpower kept Michael from accidentally stabbing the toast with the knife he’d been using to push around a slowly-melting hunk of butter. “I can _make toast_ , Jack. I’m not-” Not what? “I feel better,” if his voice would get its shit together, that would probably be more convincing. “I’m not such a fucking asshole I’d _wake you up_ to _get me food_.”

“You had a fever over a hundred for at _least_ two days.” A slightest bit of that steel from before was starting to enter Jack’s voice. “And I really doubt you’ve gone back down to normal already. Not feeling as bad anymore doesn’t mean you’re done recovering. You _still_ need to rest.”

“I’m not exactly running any marathons here.” Michael knew he was pushing it, but _fuck_. If resting meant getting someone else to do every fucking thing for him so he didn’t have to get his lazy ass out of bed, Jack was going to have to _sedate_ him to make it happen.

He didn’t want to eat any more, really. But he was pretty sure that had more to do with the conversation than him being sick. Like hell he was going to stop now.

Shuffling around the other end of the bar, Michael dropped himself on a stool and took a determined bite out of his toast.

Something as bland as bread and butter shouldn’t have _tasted_ so much. It wasn’t like it was _different_ from normal, just _more_. Probably because he hadn’t eaten anything in a few days, but goddamn, that was kind of overboard.

Jack came over and Michael braced himself to be gently hauled back to bed, but all Jack did was, slowly, so slowly Michael couldn’t _possibly_ freak out about it or not see it coming, push his hair away from his face, pull something out of his back pocket, and swipe it across his forehead.

The feeling triggered faint memories from the last few days. “What _is_ that?”

The thing, a plastic cylinder crooked at the end that had touched him, beeped and Jack looked at it with a frown. “Thermometer.”

“What the _fuck_?” Michael’s experiences with thermometers involved having them stab under his tongue while he tried not to move, or having a nurse shove something in his ear on rare trips to the doctor. Had it really been so long that they’d invented a whole new goddamn way to do it? “Are you fucking serious?”

Jack’s lips twitched a little, which Michael hadn’t been _trying_ to do, but fuck it, he’d take the win. “Gavin gags just brushing his teeth. There’s no fucking way he’d be able to hold anything under his tongue long enough to get a temperature. Geoff picked this up a year or two back. You can also check on someone while they’re sleeping and not have to wake them up for it. It’s pretty useful.”

So every time he’d felt that little swipe on his forehead, Jack had been checking his fever. Part of him wanted to ask how bad it had been. Thinking back on it now, it was mostly one pain-filled blur, with a couple of horrifically clear memories of Jack taking care of him. But asking him about that would be _reminding_ him of it and that- that he wasn’t going to do.

He focused on his toast. Being able to feel his stomach attacking the first solid food it’d had in a while was probably impossible, but he couldn’t shake the thought.

Jack was taking the kettle out of the cabinet again and Michael forced himself to just keeping eating and not say anything. He could fucking _make tea_ , if that was so important to Jack (okay, he couldn’t really blame him, he knew his voice sounded like he’d been drinking sand). Just because he’d been sick didn’t mean he couldn’t do simple fucking tasks.

But maybe it’d make Jack feel better.

That would be worth it.

He’d only just finished his toast when Jack placed a steaming cup in front of him expectantly. “How hard is it going to be to convince you to go back to bed?”

Michael grimaced, but closed his hands around the cup. The house was kind of chilly, probably the clouds and- hadn’t Geoff said something about it getting colder during the weekend? Either way, the warm ceramic felt amazing on his hands. “I’ve been in bed for _days_. I’m fine.” Actually, his head was starting to get a little worse, but it wasn’t _nearly_ as bad as before, so he ignored it. At least the nausea was staying gone.

Jack gave him a look and he tried to avoid it by taking a sip of tea- and almost choking.

“The _fuck_ is that?” It wasn’t _bad_ , it was just-

“Lemon and ginger,” Jack was watching him like a hawk, so he took another reluctant sip. “It should help keep you from getting nauseous again.”

With the honey and milk that Jack had added, it tasted like hot lemonade. Not _bad_. Just really fucking weird.

But it felt good on his throat. His stomach too. So he wasn’t going to complain about it.

“Tell you what,” Jack said. Michael kind of fucking hated that Jack had a ‘Let’s Compromise’ tone of voice and, worse, that he could recognize it in _three words_. “If you get through a shower and you still feel fine after, I won’t give you a hard time about being out of bed.” He paused, face twisting. “For a while. You really need to fucking rest, Michael. But I’ll back off for a bit if you still feel fine after a shower.”

Okay, so Michael didn’t actually _feel_ fine, but he’d never _said_ he did. He’d said he _was_ fine, but that was totally different. Saying he _felt_ fine wasn’t going to be true, not unless he bathed in health potions.

Jack probably knew that. Jack was a sneaky fuck.

But it would put this conversation off a little longer. “Fine.”

It only took him a few seconds to finish off the tea, then pointedly take the cup to the sink to wash _himself_ , ignoring the fact that it looked like Jack was only just stopping himself from making grabby hands in Michael’s direction. Then he headed back toward the guest room.

Hopefully Jack would take the time Michael was showering to cook something good for himself. Maybe rest a little. If he fell back asleep, then he’d be getting rest and Michael wouldn’t have to worry about being trapped in bed. It’d be a win-win.

The shower was too hot, too strong. It was the exact same as it’d been every other fucking time he’d used it, but for some reason, the stinging of the water made him flinch, the heat didn’t hurt in a _good_ way anymore.

He took a lukewarm shower and hated himself a little for being so fucking sensitive. At least he had some of the mint shampoo left. The subtle smell made him feel a little more centered.

Gradually, he was able to get the shower a little warmer, to really cut through the lingering feeling of sweat clinging to his skin. He had to turn it off quickly, though. Both because it hurt and, well… he might’ve been getting a _little_ light-headed.

Okay, so he was exhausted and kind of woozy, but he dried off without slipping and cracking his head open on the tile. And he pulled on the clean clothes he’d grabbed before and… alright, being clean and wearing soft clothes was enough to make his eyes droop a little, but he wasn’t-

He stepped back out into the guest room and there were new sheets on the bed. Not even the same ones as the first time, just washed. Nope. Sheets he’d never seen before. Clean sheets, blankets. Clean fucking _pillowcases_.

Why was Jack fucking doing this?

Reaching out and touching the new covers was fucking stupid. He didn’t _need_ confirmation they were _real_. But he did it anyway.

Sinking onto the mattress, he put his head in his hands.

Why the _flying fuck_ was Jack _doing_ this? It didn’t make any _goddamn sense_.

Him and the other guys, what were they _thinking_? What was their _deal_? They kept doing so much stuff that wasn’t necessary no matter HOW you thought of it. Why-?

A thought occurred to him and he lifted his head. Shifting, he pulled open the drawer by his bed and-

Yup. There was his phone.

All his memories from the last few days sort of blurred together, but he was pretty sure there’d been a _lot_ of buzzing, that first day. First two days? Something like that.

Lighting up the lock screen, the first thing that caught his attention was that he, unsurprisingly, only had two percent battery. He was actually surprised it had lasted so long, but that was probably just because it was relatively new and he hadn’t been using it.

The second thing that caught his attention were the notifications. Thirty-two unanswered texts, twenty missed calls-

Half a dozen voicemails.

 _Fuck_.

There was no way Jack had come back because he hadn’t been answering his phone, right? That was too much even for them. Wasn’t it?

It was masochistic of him, but he wanted to read the texts- listen to the voicemails. It’d hurt like fuck, but he wanted to know what had happened.

The battery wasn’t going to let that happen, though. So he groped around in the space between bed and table until he could grab the charger to plug the phone in, then drop it back into the drawer, closing it most of the way.

It would be there later.

He was tired. He was tired, and damp, and cold, and his head was starting to squeeze again. His stomach hurt, but it wasn’t nausea. It was like back in the kitchen the weird twist of guilt and nerves and fear from before.

Sleeping wasn’t something he planned, he really meant to just huddle under the covers for a second, until it stopped being cold, his head calmed down, and the guys started making sense.

But he sank into the mattress like it was fucking quicksand and there was no way back out.


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a little late, guys!! It's one of those chapters I kept rereading wondering if there was a way I could word things better, one of the ones where I have to post it just so I stop thinking about it. That probably wouldn't have been for another week, but I got some news that put me in a mood, so I'm posting it now. Hopefully, that means I can get the ball rolling on the next chap, because this one ties up the current arc in a nice little bow and I don't know about you all, but I'm ready to advance the plot!
> 
> Enjoy!

**_GAVIN [3/3 2:13pm]:  
_** I’m just SAYING!! He didn’t have to bite my head off about it.

 ** _GAVIN [3/3 2:13pm]:_**  
And now he’s got his headphones in.

 ** _GAVIN [3/3 2:14pm]:_**  
Bet you 20 quid he won’t say a word until we’re at the hotel.

 ** _GAVIN [3/3 2:23pm]:_**  
**[MMS] IMG_24307**

 ** _GAVIN [3/3 2:24pm]:_**  
Is that a whole pack of ham?

 ** _GAVIN [3/3 2:24pm]:_**  
It bloody looks like one.

 ** _GAVIN [3/3 2:26pm]:_**  
It’s all stacked up still. They just took it out of the package and slapped it on bread.

**_GAVIN [3/3 2:32pm]:_  
[MMS] IMG_24309**

**_GAVIN [3/3 2:33pm]:_**  
Ryan can’t sleep a bloody wink at night, but a loud airport puts him right the eff to sleep.

 ** _GAVIN [3/3 3:17pm]:_**  
Next flight, have to go airplane mode  
xoxoxox

 ** _GAVIN [3/3 6:59pm]:_**  
Why do people take babies on planes?

 ** _GAVIN [3/3 7:03pm]:_**  
Do babies float?

 ** _GAVIN [3/3 7:42pm]:_**  
What do you want from the convention?? Ray says you like Zelda they’ll have Zelda stuff

 ** _GAVIN [3/3 8:37pm]:_**  
**[MMS] IMG_24312**

 ** _RAY [3/3 8:50pm]:_**  
If youre ignoring Gav on purpose pls stop hes bitching

 ** _GAVIN [3/3 9:19pm]:_**  
Forgot to tell you about the vibrate switch on the side of the phone, didn’t I?

 ** _GAVIN [3/3 9:20pm]:_**  
Wonder how long it’s gonna take you to find it.

 ** _JACK [3/3 9:34pm]:_**  
It’s cool if you don’t want to talk, but could you at least text and let us know?

 ** _JACK [3/3 9:40pm]:_**  
No pressure, it’s just the radio silence is starting to make us worried.

 ** _GEOFF [3/3 11:15pm]:_**  
Call me.

 ** _RYAN [3/4 3:14am]:_**  
Geoff and Jack think maybe you left.

 ** _RYAN [3/4 3:15am]:_**  
I don’t, so why the fuck aren’t you answering your phone?

 ** _JACK [3/4 7:36am]:_**  
Don’t worry about us being in panels when you get our messages, just call.

**_GAVIN [3/4 9:14am]:_  
[MMS] IMG_24332**

**_GAVIN [3/4 9:15am]:_**  
There’s a demo for the next Zelda game here!

 ** _JACK [3/4 11:11am]:_**  
The only other panel I was supposed to be on this weekend got cancelled, so I think I’m going to come home a little early. Should get in around five.

 ** _JACK [3/4 3:50pm]:_**  
Plane had mechanical issues, missed my connecting flight. Still getting in tonight, just later.

 ** _JACK [3/4 11:53pm]:_**  
Just got in, headed home.

 ** _GAVIN [3/5 8:20am]:_**  
MICHAEL! Geoff said you’re sick??? Are you okay??

 ** _RAY [3/5 8:20am]:_**  
Youre such a fucking bitch

 ** _GAVIN [3/5 8:23am]:_**  
Don’t worry, Jack’s AWESOME when you’re not feeling good. He makes soup! MAKES IT

 ** _GAVIN [3/5 5:46pm]:_**  
Think I found something you’ll like! Hope you’re feeling better!

 ** _GAVIN [3/6 3:13pm]:_**  
Headed to the airport! See you soon  <3

 

**_[MISSED CALL]_ (20)**

**_[You have_ SIX _unheard messages… First unheard message: March 3rd, 8:45 PM]_** _“Michaaeeeellll… Why didn’t you answer the phone, Michael? It rang all the way, it’s not out of battery. Call me back, I have a question!!”_ **_[To delete this message, press 7. To save it to the archive, press 9. To hear more options, press 0.]_**

**_[Message Skipped]_ **

**_[Second unheard message: March 3rd, 9:30 PM]_ ** _“Hey Michael. Just wanted to check in since we didn’t get to talk to you before leaving. Everything okay? Give me a call.” **[To delete this message, press 7. To save it to the archive, press 9. To hear more options, press 0.]**_

**_[Message Skipped]_ **

**_[Third unheard message: March 3rd, 11:12 PM]_ ** _“…” **[To delete this message, press 7. To save it to-]**_

**_[Message Deleted]_ **

**_[Fourth unheard message: March 4th, 11:02 AM]_ ** _“… Uh, hey man… it’s- I… Oh, fuck this.” **[To delete this message, press 7. To save it to the archive, press 9. To hear more options, press 0.]**_

**_[Message Skipped]_ **

**_[Fifth unheard message: March 5th, 1:40 AM]_** _“What the fuck is wrong with you? What were you_ think _\- No you know what? You know_ fucking _what? We’re gonna be home soon, I’ll yell at you when you can’t delete it.” **[To delete this message, press 7. To save it to the archive, press 9. To hear more options, press 0.]**_

**_[Message Skipped]_ **

**_[Sixth unheard message: March 5th, 2:26 AM]_ ** _“Hey, don’t let Geoff scare you, he’s not actually mad, just worried-”_

_“…o, I’m actually fuckin’ mad-”_

_“-go to sleep, you drunk bastard.”_

_“… fuckin’ fired…”_

_“Yeah, I’ll believe that when you actually follow through on firing Gavin. Listen, Michael, it’s gonna be alright. Focus on getting better, Geoff will get the fuck over himself- oh yes you will, it’s going to be two more days before we get back and you’re a grown ass man- but yeah, just listen to what Jack tells you. You’re going to be fine, it’s all gonna be fine. We’ll be back as soon as we can.” **[To delete this message, press 7. To save it to the archive, press 9. To hear more options, press-]**_

**_[Message Archived for_ 14 _days.]_**

 

Michael locked his phone, flopped his arm over his stinging eyes, and quietly prayed for death.

 

* * *

 

 

“Oh no.”

The voice jolted Michael back from the edge of sleep. He startled, lifted his arm, and blinked until he made out Jack coming toward him.

Before he could react, Jack was taking his hand and gently prying his phone out of it.

“Wh-” Michael struggled against the sleep-stupidity, which should not be able to co-exist with his heartrate freaking the fuck out. “What are you-”

Jack set the phone on the far side of his desk, way out of reach. “You don’t need to worry about that right now.”

“But I-” Michael scrambled to push himself up off the pillow, remembered what had been _on_ the phone, and swallowed hard against the painful lump in his throat. “You-”

“Stop it.” Jack’s voice was quiet, but had that same edge of steel to it. “You’re fine. How are you feeling? Up to eating something?”

Not trusting himself to talk, Michael clenched his teeth, swallowed again. He still didn’t feel nauseous, halle-fucking-lujah, even though his head and his _everything_ still hurt, so he nodded jerkily.

“Okay, I’ll be right back.”

And then Jack walked out of the room and Michael…

Michael looked at the window. The light was the dim blue-grey of a sunset behind thick cloud cover. He’d been in bed most of the day, been asleep. It hadn’t felt like it. Just… he’d blinked and all the time was gone.

And he was still _exhausted_ he just wanted to lay down and sleep more, but he couldn’t. Jack was coming back, so he needed to stay awake.

It was such bullshit. He didn’t even feel that bad anymore, he shouldn’t need to stay in bed. He should be able to get shit done.

He pushed himself up to sit with his back to the headboard, pushed the blankets down to his ankles. No way in hell was he going to sit under the blankets like some sad terminal kid in a made-for-TV movie.

Pulling his knees up, he rested his aching head on them. It still wasn’t as bad as it had been, so he was pissed he couldn’t ignore it, but all he could focus on was staying upright until Jack got back. After that, he could put his head back down, go back to sleep.

And how sad was it that he was looking forward to that so much?

“Hey…”

Startling a little, Michael lifted his head, blinking sluggishly. Had he started to nod off again?

Jack was standing by the bed, a huge mug in his hands, the handle of a spoon resting against the inside of the rim.

The smell hit Michael like a freight train. He couldn’t say for sure what it was, couldn’t break down all the individual parts and know for certain. But it was warm and savory and his stomach let out an embarrassingly weak gurgle when his mouth started watering.

Jack smiled a little and slowly handed the mug over. Michael kinda wanted to protest that, but it was actually pretty fucking heavy. Except he knew it wasn’t _actually_ heavy, his muscles were just being little bitches and they needed to _stop_. He had to balance the damn thing on top of his knee.

The soup was pale, stirring it showed it was mostly broth, with bits of some kinds of vegetables and meat, maybe chicken? And at the very bottom-

It was fucking chicken noodle soup.

Hadn’t Gavin said that Jack _made_ -

Fuck.

It was a good thing Jack clearly wasn’t expecting him to talk, because Michael wasn’t sure he’d be able to manage it with the bowling ball in his throat. Soup felt good on it, though.

And it was delicious, because of course it fucking was.

“Hopefully that’ll be easy enough on your stomach that you can keep it down,” Jack said, settling into the chair he’d been in for the last few days. Apparently he was going to stay there and watch Michael eat. Awesome.

Still. It wasn’t the _worst_. Because Michael _did_ need to say something.

“Thanks.”

He couldn’t make eye contact or even do more than grumble the word, giving it nowhere fucking near the emphasis it needed. Not that one word could contain enough acknowledgement for what Jack had done for him, but saying nothing was even worse.

But Jack just shrugged, “Don’t mention it, I just hope it works.”

“No.” _Fuck_ , he needed to make Jack understand. Understand he wasn’t just writing this kindness off or taking it as something he should expect. That he understood everything Jack was putting himself through just to bring everything back to ‘okay’.

At the same time, though. He couldn’t _say_ that. Didn’t know what he _could_ say.

“I meant,” he made a vague gesture with one hand. “For all this. And,” he didn’t want to bring it up, he did _not_ want to bring it up, he’d rather purge it from both their minds like this was fucking Men in Black, but he hadn’t gotten a chance before, “and back in New York.”

Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw the sharp look Jack threw his way and immediately went back to the soup, hoping maybe, now that he’d said it, they could forget it’d ever happened.

“Michael…”

Or… not.

“You don’t have to thank me for that. For any of it. And you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I mean. I’d like it if you’d let one of us know something was wrong _way_ before it got bad enough for that, for this. But that’s because I wish I could’ve helped sooner.”

It was a real shame this conversation was happening now, because the soup was starting to taste like ash in his mouth. But he had to keep eating it.

“I’m sorry I got so upset with you yesterday. I was…” he paused, like he was trying to figure out how to word something delicately, “I was worried. And I stand by that you should really take better care of yourself. But I shouldn’t have put so much on you, especially when you were still… I was out of line.”

‘Out of line’. That was a new one. He’d never heard that phrase. It wasn’t hard to figure out what it _meant_. It was just weird.

How had him thanking Jack wound up with Jack apologizing to him? How in the name of fucking god had that happened? How had he fucked up something _that_ simple?

But Jack was staring at him, clearly wanting him to say something, and contradicting him, saying he hadn’t done anything wrong, that Michael had deserved that… he really didn’t want to pick another fight.

Jerking his eyes back to the mug in his hands, he muttered, “’S okay,” and went back to eating. Partly to stop the conversation dead, partly because the soup was starting to get cold and that would just be the icing of the cake of this miserable fucking weekend.

Jack shifted like he wanted to say something, but seemed to decide against it. Michael thought about asking him what it was, but he was pretty sure he didn’t want to start _that_ conversation either.

Easier to focus on simple things, like trying to get that tiny fucking piece of noodle to stay the fuck on the spoon.

Definitely not trying to calculate how long he had until the others got home based on what he remembered of the timestamps on Gavin’s travel texts.

Absolutely not that.

 

* * *

 

 

The plan had been to finish the soup, find some way to make himself look slightly more human, then sneak a coffee or Red Bull, and be able to look and act perfectly normal by the time the other guys got home.

What actually happened was he finished the soup, then opened his eyes and grey morning light was making the wall in front of his face glow.

What the actual fuck, had being sick given him fucking narcolepsy?

Felt pretty good, though. Hungry as fuck. But his head didn’t hurt, at least not yet. He was still kinda sore all over, but not nearly as much as he had been.

Apparently sitting around on his ass and letting Jack bring him shit did have positive effects on his health, imagine fucking that.

Speaking of…

Slowly, because he was trying to be quiet and because he was stiff as shit, he shifted around to look over at the chair and-

Jack wasn’t in the chair.

Geoff was.

He wasn’t looking at Michael, had a book laid out on the leg he’d crossed over the opposite knee. The fingers of one hand were absently toying with the corner of the next page and he’d braced the other against his chin, mouth half-hidden by the heel of his hand as his eyes tracked the lines of words.

Should Michael say something? Could he get away with pretending to be asleep, or actually going back to sleep?

… no. He owed Geoff some honesty too.

Swallowing hard, he bit the bullet. “Geoff?”

Those tired eyes flicked up to his face immediately. “Hey,” Geoff lifted his head and tucked a finger between the pages of the book, “how’re you doing?”

With a yawn he couldn’t hold back, Michael pushed himself up so he could lean against the headboard. He dragged one of the blankets with him because the room was fucking cold. “’M fine.” At the deeply skeptical silence from Geoff, he quickly continued. “Really. Kinda sore and…” he was totally awake, but his body was exhausted still. Felt like he’d been moving for days and days and all his muscles were worn out. But he was _not_ going to say ‘weak’. “… and tired. But fine.”

“Mmm…” Geoff glanced down at the book, snapped it shut, and set it on the desk. Then he ran a hand through his already-crazy hair and, wow, this silence was making Michael lose his mind.

“What day is it?” he asked, without really deciding to and then immediately wished he hadn’t. Could’ve just checked his phone, but nope, had to dig the grave just that much deeper. Fucking idiot.

Geoff’s fingers convulsed in his hair and for a second his head hung a little lower as he took a long, controlled breath and slowly let it out.

“Okay,” he muttered to himself. “Alright. First, it’s Monday. Second. I _never_ want you in a fucking position where you have to ask that question again, understand?”

“I-”

“Did you see the note we left you?”

Michael did have a vague memory of something being left on the fridge, “Yeah, but-”

Geoff stood, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a slip of paper. “What part of this was fucking confusing? What part of ‘call Burnie if you need _anything_ ’ didn’t make goddamn sense? What made you think you couldn’t-” he paused for a long moment, searching Michael’s face for… something. Michael honestly didn’t have any idea what he looked like, couldn’t pull together enough scraps of functional brain to figure out how he should be acting. “Calling Burnie didn’t cross your mind for a single fucking second, did it?”

Well… no, it hadn’t. And even if it had- it was the weekend. Burnie’d probably had a whole laundry list of shit to do, Michael wouldn’t have _called him_ to whine about being sick and make Burnie take care of him, he wasn’t a fucking _toddler_.

Valuing his life, he didn’t say that out loud, but apparently Geoff got enough of the idea just from _watching_ him.

“Fucking. Christ. Your fever was high enough I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw the face of god and you _still_ didn’t even _think_ about calling for help.” Geoff sounded like he wanted that to be a question, but knew the answer already.

Michael had no idea what to say. Geoff was pausing like he was waiting for Michael to say something, but he didn’t have a clue what was expected of him. Was he supposed to… apologize? Try and explain? Or would that piss Geoff off more?

Apparently, he took too long to decide because Geoff sighed, rubbing a hand down his face, and crossed over to sit at the foot of the bed. Michael had huddled under the blanket at the headboard, so there was still a lot of distance between them, but he felt his heart lurch a little anyway.

Geoff had his elbows propped on his knees as he stared blankly at the far wall. A few seconds of silence deafened the room before he spoke again. “Do you understand why that is so fucking _terrifying_ to us?”

… _what_? How was him not bothering people _scary_?

“No,” Geoff decided after the barest glance at his face. “You don’t have a fucking clue.” He looked back at the far wall. “I don’t know what would have happened if Jack hadn’t come home and the fact that I _don’t_ know that, the fact that you could have fucking _died_ while we were at some con on the other side of the goddamn country- when having someone here could have helped? Knowing asking for something like that was so far from your mind when it could have _saved your fucking life_?”

Michael kind of _wanted_ to die actually. Anything that meant he didn’t have to hear the strain in Geoff’s voice would be awesome.

“Goddammit, Michael.” Geoff put his face in both hands. “I need to know you’re not going to drop dead the second I turn my back because you got hurt and were too stubborn to tell anyone you needed to go to the fucking emergency room.”

The day Michael went to an emergency room willingly was the day he fucking died, but he wasn’t going to say that. “Geoff, I’m _sorry_.” His voice absolutely was raspy because he hadn’t had anything to drink, there was no other reason.

Finally, Geoff looked at him. “You’re not doing a great job of convincing me I don’t need to keep an eye on you.”

“You _don’t_.” _This_ conversation, he could handle. “Seriously. I fucked up, but it’s not gonna happen again.” Work was important, but he needed to keep this from _ever_ happening again. That meant regular sleep, regular meals. Anything he needed to keep from getting sick again.

Geoff stared at him for a several long moments. Then he sighed. “That’s probably as good as it’s gonna get right now.”

Michael was opening his mouth to try to be more convincing when the door to the hall cracked open almost silently. A tornado of brown hair, followed by the rest of a head, poked inside carefully.

“Michael!”

There was approximately a quarter of a second for him to brace himself before a third body hit the mattress so hard he was almost launched into the ceiling.

“You alright, Michael? Jack said you were sick and you were asleep when we got home, but you’re okay now, right?”

Gavin was… very, very close to him. He’d dived onto the bed between the two of them and had braced himself with both arms, which were now bracketing either side of Michael’s frozen legs.

He could see every different shade of color in Gavin’s bright eyes. Hell, Gavin was close enough he could probably count his eyelashes if he wanted to.

But he didn’t want to talk about being sick anymore. He was better, mostly, Geoff was visibly pulling himself back to him normal, and Gavin was staring at him with the same energy he always had, but there was an edge of worry that looked _so_ fucking out of place on his face. And that had to go.

So Michael lifted a hand between them, back to Gavin, and splayed his fingers, showing off the nail polish that was still fucking flawless because he’d done jack shit for days. “You owe me a hundred bucks.”

Gavin’s squawking was even _louder_ than he remembered, but that was fine.

It made things feel normal again.


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO WE'RE FRONT PAGE, BITCHES!
> 
> No, but seriously, Medley's on the first page now when sorting by Kudos and I love you all and want to kiss your faces, I had no idea this was going to be such a thing when I started writing it, but I'm glad you all seem like it as much as I enjoy adding to it and I hope you'll keep enjoying it as we move forward!!
> 
> Because, tbh, we are nowhere NEAR done.
> 
> <3

As it turned out, despite getting in late, Ray and Ryan had headed up to the office first thing. Gavin and Jack slept in, Geoff… well, Michael didn’t ask, because he didn’t want the answer to be that Geoff had stayed in that armchair all night. So yeah, not asking.

But they had to film AHWU, because Ryan wasn’t going to do it and leaving AHWU solely in Ray’s hands was asking for trouble, so they headed up to the office around lunch time. It was kind of a relief, except for the fact that Geoff took Michael’s phone, deliberately checked its battery level, and turned the ringer up all the way before giving him a look and pressing it back into his hand.

In hindsight, saying, “Message fucking received, get the fuck out,” was probably not the proper response to that.

That being said, Michael couldn’t find it in himself to be surprised when Ryan came back to the house less than an hour later.

“Hey,” Ryan greeted, wandering toward the kitchen. He shrugged the one strap of the backpack he was actually using off his shoulder and into his waiting hand, dropping it out of sight on one of the barstools.

After taking a second to thank the single lucky star he had that _Ryan_ , at least, didn’t seem pissed at him, Michael just nodded, “Hey,” and went back to trying to pry the lid off the Tupperware container of soup he’d found in the fridge without accidentally spilling it everywhere. It was harder than it sounded, the plastic was practically vacuum fucking sealed together, but Michael was determined to get it into a bowl and into the microwave before his stomach digested itself.

“Here,” Ryan reached into a cabinet and pulled out a pot. “It’ll taste better if you use the stove.”

Michael’s heart lurched a little at the thought of using the stovetop for anything. Yeah, maybe it was just reheating, but he hadn’t ever _done_ that. Pots and pans and little knobs might as well have been fucking rocket science, as far as he was concerned.

He’d started to open his mouth to find a way to put that off, but choked on the words when Ryan started to cross behind him, then a hand came in toward his face out of his peripheral vision. Starting to flinch back, he hit a tall, warm body and the hand smoothed over his forehead, fingers tangling in the strands of hair they could reach.

It took him a second to remember to breathe, and to realize what Ryan was doing. Tipping his head back to look up at him, he tried not to make it too obvious that the press of warmth up his spine and the fact that the back of his head landed neatly on a collar bone was making his heart vibrate in his chest. “Seriously?”

Ryan shrugged, letting up on his grip enough to slide his fingers through the rest of Michael’s hair as he pulled away, moving toward the stove. “Geoff said your fever broke, but I like to be sure.”

Phantom sensations were dancing along all of Michael’s skin, so he forced himself to take a second to breathe. Ground himself through the freezing wood floor under his bare feet. Wonder when the fuck Geoff had taken his temperature.

The bruise along Ryan’s jaw was gone. When had that happened? Why hadn’t he noticed? “You gonna lecture me too?”

“Nah,” Ryan gave the pot he was holding a little spin by the handle before setting it on a burner and sliding the Tupperware out from under Michael’s limp hands. “I’m sure Geoff and Jack have that covered. Plus, I’m not all that surprised.”

For a second, Michael thought about asking why. Then he decided he didn’t want to know and just watched Ryan open the Tupperware like it was nothing and transfer half the soup to the pot. He was going to blame that on having been sick.

“Why’d you put it on such a low setting?” Michael asked, partly to change the subject, partly because, if he was going to eat soup, he wanted it hot enough to give him second degree burns, and it didn’t look like ‘Mid-Low’ heat was going to be enough to make that happen.

“I just want it to get going right now,” Ryan said, walking away from the pot and rummaging in a cabinet. “Can you get me one of the big spoons?”

If there was one place in the house Michael knew well, outside the guest room, it was the kitchen. Still, he was proud of himself for finding the right drawer on the first try.

When he turned back, Ryan was pouring water into the pot.

“The noodles will have soaked up a lot of the broth,” he explained, even though Michael hadn’t asked, because constant questions were fucking annoying. He turned up the heat, took the spoon, and started stirring.

Michael was paying probably too much attention, but he wanted to know. He was glad Ryan was doing it, because he’d have fucked it up somehow, but he did want to know how to do it himself. The last thing he wanted to do was mooch off the guys’ leftovers until the end of time.

There was something about the way Ryan moved while cooking… comfortable to the point of being almost lazy. Slow circles with the handle of the spoon, never deviating from whatever he was thinking of, his eyes far away, but so much that he didn’t know what he was doing.

Swallowing around a suddenly dry tongue, Michael asked, “Why do you keep stirring it?”

Ryan looked up at him and, for a second, Michael was worried he’d wound up being annoying anyway, but Ryan actually looked sort of… pleasantly surprised. “So it heats evenly. If I let it just sit, it’d burn onto the bottom of the pan and the middle would still be cold.”

It was _such_ a good fucking thing Michael hadn’t had to do this on his own. He hadn’t known the water thing, or the stirring thing. That would’ve been such a fucking waste of food.

Apparently, his questions had been pretty transparent, because Ryan explained everything he did as he did it from that point on, even though Michael never asked another question. Just sat at the bar, watching Ryan cook and listening to him talk through it all.

He wished he had his phone to film it, just for a second, before realizing how fucking creepy that was and resisting the urge to slam his head off the surface of the bar in front of him.

What the fuck, he was such a fucking creep.

“Would you grab bowls?”

Something to do, fucking _good_. And it was good Ryan was eating too, if he’d just heated the soup up for Michael, that would have been mortifying.

There turned out to be just the right amount for two bowls of soup, because Ryan could apparently guess that shit on the fly. The rest of the soup went back into the fridge and then they sat in a comfortable silence to eat.

Michael still felt tired, but not sleepy. To the point he was glad to not have had to carry the bowl far, but he was pretty sure he’d go insane if he went back in the guest room and tried to lay down.

So Ryan asking, “Want to play some co-op?” after they were done eating was a huge fucking relief.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, fuckhead.”

“’Sup.” Michael wasn’t even going to fight that one, not after the voicemail Ray’d left him.

Ray dropped onto the couch hard enough to jostle him. The quiet clamor of everyone coming home filled the room, a comfortable background that was almost jarring when paired with the… weirdness radiating off Ray.

He wasn’t _mad_ , at least, he didn’t seem like it. But at the same time, he wasn’t looking at Michael. Ryan had gotten up to go greet the others (leaving behind a sympathetic look for Michael and a soft touch to the shoulder for Ray), so that left just the two of them staring blankly at the post-match screen and trying to pretend there was a reason for it.

Was there something he should be saying? Ray was so tense he was surprised he hadn’t accidentally snapped his own spine in half.

And then suddenly, Gavin.

Which was a sentiment that was becoming common so quickly that Michael could only feel pre-emptive resignation.

“Oi,” he slammed into the back of the couch, draping himself over it so fast and hard it was a real surprise he hadn’t knocked the air out of his own lungs. “We should- we should play something. Mario Party, let’s play Mario Party!”

That-

“Which one?” he found himself asking.

“Ah- hmm…” that seemed to stump Gavin, which made Michael wonder if the stuff that came out of his mouth ever actually got run past his brain first or if there was just no fucking filter at all.

“We’ve got most of them,” Ray said, not looking away from the TV. “For the Wii, the Gamecube. The first and second for the N64-”

Michael’s heart tripped a little and something must have showed on his face because one of Gavin’s sharp fingers got him in the shoulder.

“You played Mario Party before, mate?”

“Yeah.” Some. It was one of the few he remembered. In the homes with lots of kids, investing in an N64 was practically the only way to guarantee they’d leave the adults alone. Not all places _could_ , but when there was an N64, it was always being used.

So yeah, he knew Mario Party.

“First or second?” Ray still wasn’t looking, but he seemed to be thinking about _something_.

“Both. Liked the second better, though.”

“Top!” Gavin declared- and then he was off.

Michael really had no fucking idea what black magic Gavin had to work to connect an N64 to the massive, state-of-the-art TV in the living room, but, sure enough, the familiar logos came up, a theater loaded on the screen, Toad walked out on stage, bowed, then the sound kicked in and almost deafened them all.

As per usual.

It had been years, but Michael was still glad he wasn’t going to have to fight anyone for Yoshi. That had been a thing in a lot of the homes. Not a _huge_ thing, most people still wanted Mario and if there was more than one girl, they’d fight over Peach, but he’d gotten into it over Yoshi a few times. Both Ray and Gav bitched a little about their go-to characters not being in the game, but it wasn’t long before they were arguing over how long the game should be instead.

“Twenty.” Geoff scared the shit out of Michael by appearing over his shoulder without having the fucking decency to make any goddamn noise. “Any longer than that and you’ll play through dinner.”

So that was what they did, even though Gavin bitched and Ray was smug. Geoff didn’t join in, even though there was a spot for another player. He did settle in to one of the chairs to watch, though.

As the game wore on, Ray got less and less tense. He melted slowly into the couch and, only a few turns from the end, turned to bitch Michael out to his face after a duel.

He still didn’t look mad and it almost felt normal.

Normal. How fucking weird was it that normal was this, now? How had normal become sitting in this room, with these people, playing games together on a TV bigger than he was and shoving Gavin to keep him from being able to aim his tank, while amazing smells filled the room because someone was cooking?

It came out of nowhere, but he had to grit his teeth and swallow hard and focus on lobbing a cannonball over a pipe to take down Gavin’s last hit so he wouldn’t freak out or embarrass himself.

He couldn’t afford to lose his shit. Not here, not now.

Soon, he’d be working. Soon, he’d be able to pay them back, and get out of their hair, and normal would be something different.

But for right then, he focused on losing his fucking shit when Ray snatched the star out from under him.

Getting used to this, _expecting it_ , would be wrong. But there was no reason he couldn’t go along with it for now, right?

 

* * *

 

A week later, Burnie came over at lunch.

He brought tacos from somewhere called ‘Torchy’s’. He brought a LOT of tacos. Michael may or may not have stolen the entire bag after his first bite. It was smart of Burnie to have already taken a couple.

But tacos weren’t the only things he brought.

There’d been a low-level excitement to him, like he was holding back some big announcement until the most dramatic moment. Apparently, he decided that moment was right after Michael had shoved almost an entire taco into his mouth.

“Here,” he said, pulling out a thick tan envelope from some fucking magic pocket and sliding it across the table.

Michael was mid-swallow when he pulled the first papers out of the envelope and started choking.

A few hard thumps to his back and half a Dr. Pepper later, he scrubbed at his eyes, put his glasses back on, and reread the first line, just to be sure.

“But- this… Don’t you-?”

“It’s all in there,” Burnie said with a knowing smile.

Michael swept all the food to one side, hurriedly wiped off his fingers with a napkin, then tipped the contents of the envelope onto the table.

There were a few other letter-sized envelopes inside it, and they-

One had a birth certificate. With his full name, and his parents’ names, and his birthday, and the hospital name-

One had a social security card with his name on it-

“How did you get this all so fast?” He didn’t actually care about the answer, but he’d been quiet so long and had to say _something_.

“I was very annoying,” Burnie sounded so pleased with himself Michael couldn’t help but believe that.

“So this,” Michael’s fingers were absolutely not shaking when he reached out to touch the first pages, “this is…”

“That’s your official job offer, yeah.” Burnie folded his arms on the table and leaned forward. “I mean, it’s not like you can start tomorrow. There’s legal hoops, stuff we have to have on file for everyone. Drug test, background check-” well, _fuck_ , hopefully that wouldn’t turn up anything too interesting, “those sorts of things. Plus, and this isn’t really a requirement, but it’d be smart for you to get a physical. Some of the stuff we do can get a little weird and it’d be good to know if there’s anything we need to watch out for.”

Michael was all too familiar with physicals and the thought of getting one was not something he was happy about. But if it’d make Burnie feel better, he’d do it. And it would _definitely_ make the guys feel better. Geoff had been hovering, Jack had been trying to keep Red Bull in the house to a minimum, like he honestly thought Michael wouldn’t notice and Gavin wouldn’t bitch. And, the _one_ time he’d gotten maybe a little bit wrapped up in video editing and hadn’t noticed the time, Ryan had appeared and poked at him good-naturedly until he went to bed.

Maybe if he got a clean bill of health, they’d back off a little. And that way, Burnie would know he’d be able to do anything. He _would_ do anything.

“Sure,” he agreed, throat still a little raw, but only from his near death by taco.

“Cool, I’ll make you an appointment,” Burnie said, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “You can hang onto that for a few days if you want, if it all sounds good after, you can sign it and send it in with one of the guys-”

“Are you fucking kidding me? You got a pen on you?”

To his credit, Burnie didn’t even blink, just produced a pen from the same magic pocket as before.

Michael _did_ skim the thing, that was just sense, had to know what you were agreeing to to make sure you were doing everything you were supposed to. When he got to the bit about _salary_ , he stared at the numbers for nearly a full minute, like maybe they’d make sense if he did.

“Are you _shitting_ me?” he asked, boggling. “No fucking way are you paying me that much to play video games.”

“You’re actually not making as much as the other guys,” Burnie said casually, chin in hand. “It’s not personal, it’s an experience thing. But yeah, that’s your salary.”

Michael looked at the number, looked at Burnie. Back at the number. “Are you _sure_?”

A laugh was building in Burnie’s voice. “Pretty damn sure, yeah.”

Michael signed his name on the helpfully highlighted lines with the same sort of blank surrealism he’d felt that first evening after coming to Texas.

Burnie took the pages, put them back in the envelope, then tucked the other papers back into their own enveloped and stacked them in front of Michael. “These are yours, keep them somewhere safe, yeah?”

Michael put a hand over the stack and nodded, then Burnie put away the envelope and stole the bag of tacos and, well, Michael wasn’t just going to sit there and _take_ that.

Later, when Burnie was gone and the light was starting to go, Michael took the stack of envelopes back to the guest room.

His backpack had sat at the footboard of the bed for the last few weeks. Picking it up, he put it on the bed and started to pull things out.

With most of his clothes in drawers or in the closet, it wasn’t nearly as full as it had been. The sack with the glasses cases, he pulled out. The empty case went in the desk, the spare, he set aside, along with the bag of snacks Jack had given him, that he’d been gradually adding to.

A small, worn stack of books was next. Then a Gameboy- dead batteries held in by Scotch tape because he’d lost the battery cover. The Pokemon cartridge was still in it, but he hadn’t tried to turn it on in years. Maybe the guys had some batteries they wouldn’t mind him using?

Next was a small bundle of plastic sheets. It used to be a photo album, but the cover had gotten ripped off, somewhere in the blur of unfamiliar houses. The pictures were still there, though.

He didn’t look at them, just set them aside.

There was some trash he threw out. A couple of keys, for some reason, and key cards. Some pamphlets so old they weren’t legible anymore. He threw those away too.

He sorted out the things he wanted to keep from the things he didn’t need anymore. When he was done, his backpack was lying, sad and deflated, on top of the covers, with a small pile of random shit next to it. It looked so _weird_. He’d been living out of that thing for _years_ , seeing it empty was _wrong_.

Carefully, he started putting the stuff he’d set aside back in. He didn’t have to live out of it anymore, but it had been with him through everything. It might be fraying at the seams, it might be scuffed and dirty, but it was where he was going to put everything he wanted to keep safe.

All his clothes, new and old, all the little bottles of shampoo and conditioner, all the things in this room, he could live without. But if something happened, he wanted to be able to grab his backpack and have everything he needed.

The envelopes went right at the bottom. It was the safest place he could think of.


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *nervous cough* Still not dead?
> 
> Sorry for the somewhat shorter-than-normal chapter. I've been REALLY busy, for good reasons, actually, but still. It's going to take some effort to get the ball rolling back up to normal speed, so I hope you'll continue to be patient with me?
> 
> I know some of you were concerned I wouldn't come back, and I don't want there to be a misunderstanding. I know this story is important to WAY more people than I thought it ever would be, and I want those of you for whom that's true to know that it's important to me too and, even if I'm not in a position where I can sit down and put words on paper, I continue to refine it in my head, and I have the story almost entirely planned out. So you have very little at all to worry about.
> 
> That out of the way, I hope you all enjoy the chapter!

It was possible he had a minor breakdown after that.

Well. Not ‘breakdown’ really, that was more dramatic than the… mild freakout that occurred.

So maybe he should have listened to Burnie and held onto the job offer for a bit. Not because he didn’t think it was fair, but because he’d _signed it_ now and he had to actually _do what it said_ and he still didn’t have any real experience with any of it.

Okay, he’d been working on videos on his own, he’d learned a lot, but that didn’t make him _qualified_ , didn’t mean he could actually _do_ what they _needed_.

So far, he’d made two videos. The first one was his screw-up one. Where he did everything he needed by cobbling together the few things he understood and bending over backwards to make it fit. The second was a little better, he’d learned better tricks, knew how to make the program do the things he wanted using the parts of it that were made to do so instead of the unrelated parts he’d forced outside their purposes.

Alright, so maybe it wasn’t a _totally_ shit idea for him to get a little practice in _before_ starting at Achievement Hunter. If he’d tried to figure this stuff out on day one, he’d have had an actual meltdown. It wasn’t stuff you picked up on your own without an assload of trial and error. And even after teaching himself for a couple of weeks, he still felt like he barely knew the basics.

He’d been hunched over the keyboard for a couple of hours when a barely-there noise made him push his headphones back around his neck and spin in his chair.

“Hey, Michael,” Gavin’s voice was… not soft, but definitely lacking in the energy he usually had. He looked _off_ too, even though his smile was real.

Narrowing his eyes, Michael took a closer look. Gavin didn’t have any shiftiness like he was upset or up to something. In fact, he was moving kinda slow. Not sluggish, just… deliberate, almost.

“You okay, Gav?”

Gavin made a weird noise in the back of his throat and shuffled forward. “’M tired.” Then, without any more explanation than that, he flopped onto the bed, toed his shoes off over the edge, and stretched his long limbs out for a prolonged second before relaxing into the mattress.

Michael’s eyebrows were trying to scale his forehead. “Comfy?”

Making another weird noise, Gavin buried his face in one of the pillows, flapping his hand at Michael. “It’s been a long day, Michael.”

No kidding. Nothing really seemed to be _wrong_ , but Gavin’s version of ‘tired’ tended to be the ‘laughing hysterically because it’s three in the morning and you just realized the Red Bull you spilled on the counter sort of looks like a dick’ kind. Not the ‘genuinely tired’ kind.

Still. It was weird.

“You just gonna stay there?”

The ‘yep’ was a little muffled by the pillow, but still pretty clear.

Well. It wasn’t really a problem if Gavin chilled there. The house was dead quiet, but Gavin had clearly just gotten in, so, “Did the other guys go somewhere?”

“Geoff, Ryan, and Jack did. Errands.” Gavin turned his head on the pillow to look at Michael. “Ray’s here, but he’s been in a tiff since this morning. He’s probably gonna be playing games in the guest room for the rest of the day.”

 _That_ didn’t sound good. “Did something happen?”

“Nah.” Gavin flopped onto his back and closed his eyes. “We were busy, but we get busy a lot. He gets like this by his bleeding self, sometimes. We tried to cheer him up, at first, but that just made it worse. Seems he gets better fastest if we just leave him alone.”

… okay. Michael didn’t want to interfere in their system, but that didn’t sound good at all. He was itching to go check on Ray, but that apparently wasn’t a good idea.

“Whatcha working on?” Gavin asked. It didn’t feel like he was changing the subject, just that he’d only noticed Michael had an editing program open and was curious.

“Oh, just,” Michael fought the urge to grab the mouse and minimize the program, “… practicing.”

“Ooh, let me see,” Gavin started to push himself up and Michael maybe panicked a little.

“Fuck no! It- it’s not done.” Technically, the second video _was_ done, he was just tweaking the timing a little. Comedic timing was a bitch- half a second difference in the length of a silence could make or break a joke.

“After, then.” Gavin didn’t seem too disappointed, since he immediately flopped down on the pillows. He really did look tired. The only other time Michael had seen him like that, he’d been sprawled out on the couch, falling asleep while Geoff ran a hand through his hair.

Michael’s fingers gave a helpless twitch at the thought and the sight of Gavin’s horribly disheveled tornado of hair, so he immediately set them and his attention back to editing.

Even though he put the headphones back on, he left one of the cups off, putting them at an angle so his left ear was free to hear if Gavin did or said anything.

It was actually kind of nice, sitting there and working with Gavin nearby. Not that he was really doing anything differently, especially since Gavin was, for once, being dead silent, but the whole room had a different sort of feeling to it.

Or at least it _did_ , until Gavin said, “Mate, are you not using the keyboard at _all_?”

Hurriedly pausing the preview, Michael looked over. “What?”

“Keyboard shortcuts!” Pushing himself up, Gavin came over and-

Aaaand Michael’s chin nearly touched his collarbone when Gavin came up behind him, arms going over his shoulders to reach the keyboard, chin resting on top of Michael’s head no matter how far he hunched down.

“I’ll show you, you’re gonna love this!”

Didn’t matter whether he’d love it or not, he wasn’t sure he could remember the English fucking language with Gavin draped along his back, slipping his hands under Michael’s, taking control of the computer.

“Look, see? You can switch between tools with the keys. It’s hard to get used to at first, but once you’ve got it, it’s _loads_ faster, you don’t have to slow down at all. You can use them to control the preview too, here-“

Michael realized that Gavin was plenty close enough to hear through his headphones a little too late.

He couldn’t exactly _stop_ it, though, not with Gavin in control of the computer, not without pushing him away, and Michael was _far_ too worried about accidentally hurting him to even consider that.

Well, at least not seriously. The laughing Gavin was doing was humiliating enough for him to entertain the thought a _bit_.

At least, until the end of the video, when Gavin released the keyboard to wrap arms around him from behind.

“This is brilliant, Michael! Can’t wait for Geoff to see it, it’s going to be top!”

“I-” Gavin was incredibly warm. “It’s still not fucking done, you cheating bitch.”

Gavin just laughed. “You have to let me be there when you show him!”

Michael had not actually planned on showing the practice videos to _anyone_. But if it’d make Gavin _that_ happy, he could probably deal with it.

 

* * *

 

The spoon Geoff had been using to stir his coffee hit the kitchen counter with a disproportionately loud clatter. “Did you just- what the fuck did you just say?”

Michael kept his eyes on his oatmeal. He had no idea if that was a good spoon-drop or a bad spoon-drop. Besides. Oatmeal was fucking awesome. One of the most filling things on the goddamn planet, even before he put a shitload of peanut butter in it. He may have stolen a few packets to stash in his backpack. Nothing could be proven.

“Burnie suggested it.” He said, watching the steam rise unhappily. He just wanted to eat without burning the shit out of his mouth. “Set it up too.”

“Yeah, but you’re still _going_.”

“Where’re you going?” Ray asked, shuffling in from the hall. Only he and Geoff had yet to head into work, which was really weird since Geoff usually liked to head out early.

Then again, Michael could see what Gavin had meant. Ray _was_ off, though he’d been trying to keep it under wraps around him. Probably because of the whole ‘guest’ thing, which was fucking dumb.

Ray was definitely in a bad mood. He didn’t look up, not at Michael, not at Geoff. Just grabbed a breakfast sandwich out of the freezer and threw it in the microwave. Kept his eyes unfocused on the timer. There was absolutely something up there.

“Physical,” Michael tried to sound nonchalant and not like the word stuck in his throat. “Burnie wants to make sure I’m not gonna drop dead at work.”

“Oh, nice.” Ray sounded like he meant it, somehow, even though his voice was flatter than should be possible. He was just kind of… staring, arms hanging limply at his sides, even though the line of his shoulders was unbelievably tense.

Without thinking, Michael glanced over at Geoff, flicked his eyes over at Ray. Geoff shrugged helplessly, and the look in his eyes when he turned toward Ray was more than a little worried. But not a frantic sort of concern, which made sense if this really did happen sometimes.

But just because it wasn’t _new_ didn’t mean it was _fine_. Ray looked… stressed and listless all at once. Like he was zoning out so he wouldn’t have to think about what was bothering him. Maybe he eventually ignored it enough to go back to normal, before. Still. It would be better if they could _help,_ somehow.

Geoff picked up his spoon again before the silence could get _too_ long. “When are you going?”

“In a couple of days.” Michael had wanted to put it off even longer, but figured that would make Burnie suspicious. Hopefully the last of his bruises would have faded, by then, and he’d be able to put on a little more weight. He didn’t _technically_ have to tell anyone the results of the physical, but the last thing he wanted was to field the questions he knew he’d get.

It was in no way the first time he’d gotten a physical. He was painfully familiar with the whole fucking song and dance.

Sure, it had been years, but he doubted people had changed all _that_ much. The first sign that anything less than normal was going on with him, everything would change. He wasn’t a kid anymore, which would hopefully help, but he knew he still looked _young_.

He didn’t want to deal with the casual attitudes dropping into something disturbed. He didn’t want to deal with voices going soft and careful. Sure as _shit_ didn’t want anyone to think Burnie, who’d be driving him there, was the one behind the bruises. If anyone called a cop, he was going to flip his shit.

But he’d do it, if it’d make them feel better. If it would help prove the only permanent thing left behind by his past were the scars.

Ray brought his breakfast to the bar, but sat at the opposite end from Michael. He still didn’t look at either of them, and he ate slowly, like he had to force himself to do it. Which was really weird for someone who tended to inhale junk food like a starving person, under most circumstances.

As far as Michael was concerned, his physical was not was they needed to be focusing on. Something was wrong with Ray. And even if he’d handled it by himself before, there was no fucking way Michael wanted to leave him on his own to just keep handling it.

But that still left the problem of figuring out just what the hell was going on. How was _he_ supposed to manage it when Ray’s _boyfriends_ had failed?


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full disclosure- I wrote this all in one sitting, just now, so it is almost definitely rife with typos. I'm sorry, I will fix it when I next get the chance to sit down with it. I just wanted to post this because I have a doctor's appt in three hours myself (yes, it's five in the morning, no, I haven't slept) and I like to share the pain.
> 
> Enjoy!

The day he was supposed to go to his physical dawned cold and grey, which Michael took as a personal insult since it’d been in the seventies the day before.

Apparently drastic changes like that were normal in Texas, but seriously, what the fuck?

Because he hadn’t had sunlight to go by, he slept way later than he usually would have, only waking up to the buzzing of his phone well after the guys were gone.

The air outside the blankets felt way colder than it probably was, but he still pulled the phone into his cocoon instead of actually getting up. After being temporarily blinded by the screen, he made out the text from Burnie, just confirming that he’d be coming by that afternoon to pick Michael up for his appointment.

That was kind of hilarious. ‘Appointment’. Like he was going out of his way not to say ‘doctor’ or ‘physical’ or generally remind Michael at all about how fucked he was.

… Also how cynical he apparently was first thing in the morning, Jesus fucking Christ.

He fired a quick text back just to let Burnie know he was still on board, then dragged himself out of the nice warm bed and made a beeline for the nice, soon-to-be warm, shower.

By no means had he finished playing Hair Product Roulette. He’d taken to lining up the tiny bottles on the ledge in the shower, in order of the ones he liked best. Mostly he didn’t care, but some were definitively bad and he did like one or two. On the whole, the smell was general just too _much_ , like they were trying to act as perfume or cologne.

Today’s pick was a little less awful. It didn’t have a particular scent, just a brand name, and a normal, clean smell, just like regular soap. Not the best, but not the worst. Anything that didn’t make his eyes water landed in the ‘plus’ column.

What most definitively did _not_ land in the plus column was getting _out_ of the shower and stepping out into the freezing cold guest room. Even still having the towel around his shoulders didn’t do much to help, and he was shivering before he could drag clothes out of one of the dressers.

One thing he could say for Gavin, the guy took the weather into account. Even though it’d been so warm when they went shopping, there were still long-sleeved shirts to choose from. Hell, there were even a few more beanies lurking in the top drawer.

Still, showering and getting dressed only took about fifteen minutes. There were still _hours_ until the physical, which mean he just had to… wait.

He _tried_ to do shit. Went out to the kitchen, forced himself to eat the food that had been left for him. The fact that he wasn’t hungry, really, was pretty unsettling. He knew _why_ , but fuck, did he hate it.

After that, he tried to work, but he couldn’t _focus_. He just watched the video over and over, trying to figure out what Gavin had found so funny. Michael hadn’t been _trying_ to be funny, he’d just been trying to get the hang of recording, editing. But timing could do wonders for comedy, that he could readily admit.

He fell into that weird headspace where it felt like time was crawling, but also like it was going too fast. Trying to kill time to stop the anticipation wasn’t working, but two o’ clock was approaching way more quickly than it had any right to.

Googling what all physicals entailed was both a bad idea and incredibly unhelpful. There didn’t really seem to _be_ a concrete list of things that’d get checked. Plenty of lists about what you ‘might’ expect. Nothing definitive.

Didn’t help that he knew getting worked up about it would only fuck him over if they checked his pulse or blood pressure or what the fuck ever indicated stress. Only thing to fear is fear itself and all that.

Time crawled and sprinted and before he knew it, he was getting the text that Burnie was outside.

He pulled on his shoes, tied them, grabbed a jacket, then paused, hand on the door frame, and just _breathed_ for a second. The absolutely last thing he needed was to get into a confined area with Burnie ‘mind-reader’ Burns while he was freaking out.

On the inhale, he pushed everything down, down… he was going to do this no matter what, freaking out could wait until later, but he _was_ going to do this, and he _was_ going to do everything thing he fucking could to keep if from getting weirder than it had to. He violently evicted the nerves from his mind- not his body, he could feel the nervous energy lingering at the edges of his focus, but he could avoid thinking about it. Not forever. But for a couple of hours.

On the exhale, he pushed away from the door, down the hall, out the front door. The unnecessarily fucking _awesome_ alarm system locked the thing behind him, so he headed down the path to the sidewalk, where Burnie’s car was idling.

The air bit at his nose, but it wasn’t too bad. Didn’t hold a candle to Jersey, anyway. Wasn’t _nearly_ enough to make him uncomfortable in the few seconds before he slid into the heated car.

“Hey” was the first word out of Burnie’s mouth. “Seatbelt” was the second, which was either Burnie noticing a trend with Michael in particular or just the natural reflex of a paternal sort of person with employees of debatable levels of maturity.

“Hey,” Michael said, reluctantly clicking the seatbelt into place.

“We’re not headed too far from here,” Burnie said without prompting, pulling away from the curb. “Smart to get there in plenty of time, though. We’ll probably be waiting a while, but they’ll almost definitely have a lot of paperwork that needs to be filled out.”

Fucking. Great.

Michael sighed, sank farther into his seat, gave Burnie a sidelong look, and decided that Burnie was probably the most objective person he could talk to about this stuff, given how most of the guys looked at him when it came up. “You realize I know fuck all about what that paperwork is going to ask?”

“We can give a vague explanation when we check you in.” They were both aware that ‘we’ meant ‘Burnie’ in that context and, as much as Michael wanted to be able to take care of everything himself, he knew Burnie handling it would be significantly less awkward than him traumatizing some poor receptionist by trying to explain that he’d been put in the foster system at seven and was homeless by twelve, which was why he knew jack shit about his family’s (or his, really) medical history.

He wished he had a better idea than that, but the bruises on his torso hadn’t quite faded and he still looked thinner than he should be in the mirror, so he was going to have enough awkward conversations to deal with as it was.

At first, he didn’t even realize they’d arrived where they were supposed to. Most of his experiences had been at hospitals, so a smaller building was kind of surprising. It wasn’t even surrounded by other healthcare buildings. Fuck, the other places he could see looked like… offices or something.

Burnie pulled into a spot in front of a pale stone building that was a contrast to a lot of the other buildings, which looked like they were made almost exclusively of two-way glass. “Here we are.”

The building looked nice, actually. All of them did. Which wasn’t meshing with Michael’s memories of doctors at all.

He kept his head down and his hands in his pockets and he and Burnie went inside. Apparently the office was just a small part of the building, since the waiting room was behind a glass door to one side while a staircase and another hall led out to the rest of the building.

The waiting room was almost completely deserted, with just an older woman flipping idly through a magazine that actually looked somewhat recent. Fortunately, she was closer to the hall leading to the exam rooms, so that left him open to park himself in the corner, with his back to both walls and his eye on both exits.

Burnie didn’t so much as blink at Michael booking it to a defensible location, just casually leaned against the reception counter and picked up a pen out of a nearby cup to scrawl something on the clipboard laid out on his side of the window. Then his whole feel changed. Not to something bad, or even sneaky, but he drew the woman on the other side of the window into a low conversation.

The receptionist’s eyes flicked over to Michael for a second and she gave him a polite smile instead of looking away guiltily at having been caught, which he grudgingly respected enough to muster a thin smile of his own.

She went back to her conversation and didn’t seem alarmed or anything by what Burnie was saying. Her hand kept doing this little half-wave between them, like she was putting aside his concerns. However Burnie was explaining the situation to her, she didn’t seem worried about whether it was possible to make things work with what little Michael could offer, which probably meant he wasn’t explaining it right, but fuck if Michael was going to get in on that conversation.

And then something weird happened. Burnie’s voice dropped even lower, he leaned a little closer in, and he made a little gesture, a little push with one hand. The receptionist didn’t seem put off by whatever he said, just nodded and bustled around with something behind the counter before taking one of the pens from the cup and handing it to him, along with another clipboard, which he brought over to Michael.

“Here,” he said, passing it over. “She said it’s fine to leave anything you don’t know blank for now, especially since this is just a general physical and there’s not something specific you’re worried about.”

Well that was good, but he still felt like an idiot when he couldn’t fill in more than his name, birthdate, and phone number. He spent a full two minutes staring at the lines for his address and trying to decide if it was okay to put the guys’ address down. Fuck, he didn’t even _know_ the guys’ address, really. He could ask Burnie, maybe, but he couldn’t figure out the right words to bring it up and eventually just moved on.

 On to a practically infinite list of questions and check boxes. No he wasn’t allergic to any medication (that he knew of, he’d hardly tried them all), no he hadn’t had surgery in the last few years. Most of the check boxes for pre-existing conditions were easy- he knew what stuff like hemophilia and diabetes were and knew he didn’t have them. Other things he had to stealthily Google because he had no idea what the fuck was being asked.

No he didn’t smoke, drink, or do drugs. Half a decade in foster care and a full decade on the streets had done a good job of driving home just how terrible an idea it would be to get even passingly involved in addictions. Some were, obviously, worse than others.

He wasn’t against alcohol in theory, but he didn’t have lots of experience with it considering he hadn’t had an ID to buy it with, looked like a teenager, and would much rather have bought food with what precious money he got than alcohol. His experience was mostly limited to occasionally seeing people have fun drinking at parties he snuck into, and seeing drunks curled up in alleys with their bottles, which were radically different ends of the spectrum.

That might change now, considering who he was living with and the fact that disposable income seemed to be in his future. Maybe a little farther in the future than Burnie and the guys would be happy with, but they could go fuck themselves if they thought his first priority would be doing anything other than paying back what he could and negotiating some kind of rent agreement.

He spent a fair chunk of time debating whether to mention the awful weekend he’d spent sick, but finally decided he probably should. It had taken him the better part of a week to completely recover, even after he stopped actively feeling like shit. He’d gotten tired so easily and wanted to sleep so much. And the aching had lasted almost as long.

It was almost definitely because he’d pushed himself way more than he should have and he _knew_ that… but just in case there was more to it, more that could maybe cause trouble for the guys, he put it down anyway.

After that was just a privacy agreement, which he signed without reading because he really didn’t give a fuck. Then he took everything back to the receptionist who smiled and told him they’d be with him shortly. Which sounded nightmarish, but also true considering the old lady had been called back while he was filling out the paperwork.

Burning barely looked up when Michael got back to his seat, seemingly absorbed in whatever was on his phone. He could have been reading work emails or tweeting or playing fucking Angry Birds for all Michael knew, and he didn’t feel like asking.

As for him, he had his own entertainment. Gavin was, apparently, either not working or shamelessly texting Michael in the middle of videos. It could really go either way, but Michael didn’t much care about the answer just then.

Every second _crawled_. Gavin texted back at the speed of light, but Michael still found himself opening and closing the messages as he waited for new ones. He just wanted it to be fucking _over_ , but at the same time, he felt a cold wave of dread sweep through him when a nurse came into the room and called his name.

Burnie gave him a thumbs up as he stood, which he rolled his eyes at, but was also very obviously looking him over for signs he was about to lose his shit. Which was objectively good, considering the circumstances, but the little pride he still had took a bit of offense.

The nurse was friendly and didn’t seem to care that Michael couldn’t muster up the energy to be more than polite back. She took his temperature (with one of those ear thermometers he remembered, which felt weirdly invasive after the one Jack had used) and led him to a scale and one of those metal rulers bolted to the wall that measured height.

It was a little surreal to be told how tall he was, since he hadn’t actually known that in numbers since he was twelve. But then there was the whole scale thing and wow did the nurse’s expression change when she saw how much he weighed.

She was a middle-aged woman with a ring on her left hand and a charm bracelet with birthstones set into 3 little silver figures. So the deeply disapproving frown when she saw the number wasn’t exactly a huge shock. The once over she gave him was almost subtle, and it was possible he’d been trying to mask his figure with the hoodie and she wasn’t fooled anymore.

Thankfully, she didn’t comment, just led him into an empty exam room further down the hall.

He had to take off his jacket for the blood pressure cuff and was distracted when the nurse put something on his finger that looked like it was measuring his… heart rate? Maybe? Whatever it was, he couldn’t help staring at it in bemusement as the blood pressure cuff cut off circulation to his left arm.

Those numbers didn’t get read out and he didn’t ask.

The nurse spent a few minutes typing into the computer, told him the doctor would be in soon, and left.

A pale yellow sign on the wall told him that his cell phone needed to be off, but the silence in the room felt like it was physically choking him and Gavin sending him pictures of the guys was practically a lifeline.

Geoff with his face in his hands, so Michael could practically hear his half-serious bemoaning about how no one listened to him. Jack nodding along, but very clearly taking in none of it. Ryan not even pretending to listen, a wry smirk hovering on his lips.

None of the pictures were of Ray directly, but he was in the background of a few. And it was those that showed Michael the most worrying thing he’d seen since he came to Texas.

Ray had a controller in hand, was obvious in the middle of actively playing a game, and his eyes were unfocused and glazed over.

When Ray played games, there was a laser focus to him that people would kill for. Michael would actually bet money that Ray almost never blinked when playing. Could he probably play games and get through them without totally having to focus his eyes? Absolutely. Was that something Michael had ever seen him do? Fuck no.

Games were _Ray’s_ lifeline. If whatever was bothering him was still bothering him while he was _playing_ , the problem was serious.

Michael was so absorbed in the texts that he jumped like he’d been jabbed with a cattle prod when the door suddenly opened.

The doctor who came in was one of those weird sorts of people who still looked like they were in their mid-thirties even when their hair was starting to gray. But there were smile lines around his eyes and he was friendly when he introduced himself.

Michael was too busy frantically trying to shove his phone in his pocket to have heard his _name_ , but the doctor didn’t seem surprised or irritated that Michael hadn’t followed the pale yellow poster’s directions.

“Now,” the doctor said, sitting down in the swivel chair in front of the computer. “I know you’re new in town and understand it’s been quite some time since you’ve seen a doctor?”

It was impossible for Michael to tell whether the doctor was phrasing that delicately or if it was really all Burnie’d said. “Yeah, that’s right.”

Nodding to himself, the doctor clicked a few times, “Your blood pressure is higher than I’d like, but unless something else presents itself, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to write that off as a touch of white coat syndrome. You’re young and hardly seem inactive. _Is_ there anything else bothering you?”

Michael shook his head, realized the doctor wasn’t actually looking his way, and cleared his throat. “No, nothing.”

“It says here you were sick recently?”

The grimace came on without Michael really thinking about it. “Yeah, but my…” … friends? Co-workers? “… roommates are pretty sure that was stress and lack of sleep.”

“It very well might have been, every body reacts to stress differently. Just from what I can see here, your temperature is normal, but you’re significantly underweight for your height and general build.”

Michael didn’t really know what to say to that, so he focused on trying to develop the power of invisibility.

The doctor finally turned to look at him. “What a physical generally consists of is a basic exam and bloodwork. While I’d like to do a more comprehensive one, due to your lack of history, any anxiety or stress you might be under could skew results, so we’ll keep it basic for now.”

Thank fucking Christ.

Basic apparently meant _basic_. He didn’t even have to take his shirt off, which was a hell of a relief, since he didn’t want a doctor’s opinion on some of the worse scars.

At first, the doctor barely even touched him. Eyes, ears, throat, none of them were bad, since they were so distant.

Next was the stethoscope, which wasn’t bad either, but he was _painfully_ aware of his breathing the whole time and desperately trying to keep it even. He was surprised he managed to stay calm when the doctor stood behind him for a second.

The panic he’d been expecting never really kicked in. Obviously he wasn’t _comfortable_ , was uncomfortable enough for his blood pressure to skyrocket. But he never outright broke into the cold sweat panic he’d thought he would, not even when the doctor started probing at his neck.

Everything felt really distant, actually. He wasn’t happy about it or comfortable with it, but it wasn’t making him a nervous wreck like he thought it would. Actually, he wasn’t feeling much of anything. Maybe he was getting better about this sort of thing?

“We’ll have to wait for the bloodwork to get more comprehensive results, but you do appear deficient in certain vitamins,” the doctor said, returning to the computer and typing away at it. “I’m going to give you a list of good multivitamins to choose from, you should start on those immediately. We’ll have a better idea of what specifically needs to be tackled once the labs get back to us, and we’ll call you with the results.”

Yeah, right. The lack of vitamins could be blamed on mostly living off expired convenience store food for way too long. Given how much good food he had available these days, he’d hardly think he needed to take something on top of that. He just needed more time.

He nodded anyway. Way easier than arguing with a doctor.

“I’m also printing out a weight gain program for you. You don’t have to follow it to the letter or anything, but you should at least try to incorporate some of the concepts and suggested foods into your diet. I’d like you to put on a good fifteen pounds over the next few months at least.”

Sure, whatever. Michael had put on weight since getting to Texas anyway, he just needed to continue like he had been.

“Do you have any questions?”

That sort of threw Michael for a loop. _Was_ there anything he wanted to know? As long as he wasn’t going to give the guys any problems, there wasn’t anything he could think of.

Except-

He hesitated for a second and watched the doctor sit a little straighter, waiting for a question. “Last few weeks, I’ve been tired. A _lot_. Like, go to bed early, sleep late, take multi-hour naps during the day tired. What’s with that?”

The doctor frowned in thought, tapping a finger against the counter by the keyboard. “Could be a number of things. Did you go through a change in circumstances just before that? If you’d been stressed or on edge for a long time, then that suddenly dropped off, your body would need time to recover from the strain. And you said you got sick because of stress and lack of sleep a couple of weeks ago, right?”

Michael nodded.

“If you were that tired and trying to recover, then pushed through it and slept even less than a normal amount, that would absolutely take its toll on your body. For now, I’d say sleep when you’re tired, take the vitamins, focus on getting to a healthy weight. If it keeps up, it’ll be the next thing we tackle.” The doctor paused, like he was trying to decide whether or not to say something that might be a touchy subject, then continued. “It’s worth mentioning that persistent fatigue can also be a symptom of depression. Like I said, given your circumstances, it makes sense you’d be tired, but going through massive amounts of stress over a long period of time can also take an emotional toll, which can, in turn, take a physical toll. Hopefully the fatigue will fade soon, but it’s something to keep in mind.”

So pretty much everything looked like it was going to go away as long as he took it easy and ate actual food. He just needed to give it time.

There were worse prognoses.

He didn’t have any other questions, so the doctor said the nurse would be by to get his blood, then they shook hands again and he left.

The door had barely closed behind him when it opened again, the nurse from before carrying a large container that very obvious contained gauze and colorful bandages. It was like she’d been lying in wait. He hadn’t even had time to take his phone out.

It had been _years_ since anyone had stuck a needle in him and it wasn’t until the inside of his elbow had been swabbed with alcohol and there was a tourniquet around his bicep that he realized he was going to have to sit perfectly still while a total stranger hurt him.

He sucked a breath in through his teeth, held it, and let it out carefully. The nurse didn’t seem to notice, she was poking at his arm, trying to find a good vein.

This wasn’t a big deal. It was just a _needle_. Just a prick, barely anything, and it would be over. It wasn’t anything he should be weird about.

Digging the fingernails of his free hand into the vinyl of the chair he was sitting on, he kept his eyes on the far wall, steadily refusing to look at the needle.

It wasn’t the pain that was the worst part, it was the anticipation. Know it was going to happen any second but not exactly _when_.

The needle piercing his skin was actually a relief. It was a very specific kind of pain, dull and sharp all at once, but once the needle was _in_ , it didn’t hurt. He watched with morbid fascination as the blood travelled through the little tube and filled vial after vial.

Pulling the needle out barely registered as pain at all, and then the nearly invisible hole in his arm with bandaged with a cotton ball and lime green wrap, which was confusing as fuck until Michael realized the nurse had been matching his green shirt. After that it was kind of funny.

Still, he pulled his jacket back on the second he could. It wasn’t that he was _hiding_ the bandage, necessarily. It was just cold outside.

Mechanically, he accepted a thin stack of printouts from the nurse before following her back to the entrance.

He hadn’t felt all that stressed out, so it was weird to feel a surge of relief when he walked back out into the waiting room and saw Burnie.

Burnie grinned and stood, putting his phone away and pulling out his car keys and Michael turned to the door and saw the reception desk and felt all the blood leave his face as he remembered medical services _cost money_.

But the receptionist just gave him a sunny smile. “You’re good to go!”

The ‘take any advantage you can get’ part of him that was still pretty loud pushed him to follow Burnie out the door without questioning it. But still.

Were they planning on billing him? Had Burnie done something? Michael had no idea how this sort of thing worked, it wasn’t like doctors’ offices and hospitals came equipped with cash registers.

“You good?” Burnie asked, as soon as they were in the car, giving the papers in Michael’s hand a pointed look.

He rolled his eyes and put the papers in the back seat. Out of sight, out of mind. “Good news, I don’t have any secret terminal illnesses.”

Burnie rolled his eyes right back, but he was smiling as he nudged Michael’s shoulder. “Seatbelt.”

 

* * *

 

 It was four-thirty in the afternoon and Michael was about to claw off his own skin.

Burnie had dropped him off forty-five minutes ago and he’d fully intended to get right to work now that he could focus, but that had _not_ happened.

He’d gotten back inside, locked the doors, wandered into the guest room, kicked off his shoes, and gotten swept up in wave of adrenaline.

It had snuck up on him. Like it had been held back _just_ long enough for him to not feel it in the doctor’s office, just long enough for him to get behind closed doors. Then it collapsed on him like a sprung trap and he was amazed he had enough room left to _breathe_.

There was so much nervous energy under his skin and so many phantom touches on his chest and back and face and neck that there was _nothing_ else for him to feel. He wanted to scrub his skin raw. He wanted to run. He wanted… something. He didn’t know. He felt like an exposed nerve, like just a strong gust of wind could light him up like an electrocution. Like the fucking _air touching him_ wasn’t safe.

If he didn’t feel like his soul was going to vibrate out of his body, he’d probably be under the bed again. He wouldn’t give a good goddamn about his pride, about what it looked like to the guys-

Oh _fuck_ , the guys.

He couldn’t let the guys see him like this. Fuck, he couldn’t hide this. They had enough to worry about with Ray. Jack would smell this on him a mile off and this wasn’t something _fixable_. This wasn’t something there was a cure for, this was something he was going to have to _ride out_.

Staying there wasn’t an option, but what could he _do_ , it wasn’t like he could _go_ -

He froze mid-pace.

There was a bicycle in the garage. There was a bicycle that belonged to _him_ in the garage. He had a wallet, virtual keys to the house, and a bicycle.

He ripped the bandage off his arm, threw it in the trashcan that was _still_ by the bed, pulled on his jacket and his shoes, checked his back pocket for his wallet, and threw himself out the door.


	35. Chapter 35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to wait until Sunday to post this, but I'm an impatient piece of shit.  
> Enjoy~

There was a slight possibility that, having been in a rush to leave the house, Michael had not paid all that much attention to where he was going.

It wasn’t like he really could have, though. He hadn’t had that kind of focus. Everything had been fucking suffocating him, he’d just needed to get _out_.

Running was cathartic, biking away let him go _so_ much faster and made that lizard brain panic calm the hell down so he could think again.

Not that he actually, y’know, _had_ started thinking again. For a while, he just WENT. The sky was overcast, but it wasn’t raining, so it wasn’t like he had that to worry about. Yeah, it was cold out, and sucking down chilled air after pedaling as fast as his legs could handle probably wasn’t great for him.

But watching the blocks pass and swinging onto the sidewalk to avoid the odd car made that trapped feeling that had been gnawing on his brain leave almost completely. Considering it had been bothering him ever since he walked into the Rooster Teeth offices, it was an insane relief.

So he pushed as fast as he could and stood on the pedals to coast when he felt like it and didn’t worry too much about where he was or where he was going.

Eventually, the cool air got to be a little much and he’d been breathing through his mouth, which made his throat dry as hell. When he started coughing, he rode up to the nearest convenience store.

Leaving his helmet and bike chained to the rack outside, he wandered in and used some of the cash he’d been holding onto to get a bottle of water and a cup of coffee. The coffee wasn’t as good as the coffee he could get at the guys’ place, but he needed _something_ warm.

Sliding into one of the crappy booths, he wrapped his fingers around the cheap cardboard travel cup and relaxed as they gradually thawed.

He was tired again, and he _really_ wished he could be more fucking surprised by that. At least it wasn’t the usual kind, where he could think of anything but finding the nearest horizontal surface. It was just post-adrenaline tired, where every muscle felt overworked- and biking around for… an hour? Two? Probably hadn’t helped.

But he felt _better_. There was something about _knowing_ he could just go that made everything better. Thinking back on how panicked he’d been at the guys’ house was just embarrassing, now. Nothing had even been _wrong_ , really. Nothing had been going on. He’d just lost his shit for now real reason.

It was stupid and he hated it, hated the fact that his body would just sometimes decide it was time to lose it and he couldn’t control it.

At least he knew something that would help, some, now.

The coffee was just this side of too hot, but he drank it anyway. There was something about the way the warmth sank into his chest that made it hard for him to stop.

When he’d finished, he set the empty cup to one side, cracked open the water bottle, and drank half of it in one go. The temperature difference was a pretty significant shock to the system, but he was _so_ damn thirsty.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket, setting it on the table and unlocking it as he took another drink- then nearly choked to death when he saw it was almost six.

Well _shit_. If the guys weren’t home already, they would be soon.

As if on fucking cue, his phone buzzed with an incoming text. From Geoff.

With a preemptive grimace, he flicked his finger over the screen to open the message.

 ** _GEOFF [3/17 5:57pm]:_**  
Where are you?

Okay. That wasn’t so bad. Especially if he answered quickly.

 ** _TO: GEOFF [3/17 5:58pm]:  
_** Went for a bike ride. Heading back soon

He had to figure out where he was and how to get back, first. That wouldn’t be _too_ hard, he didn’t think.

There was a map app on his phone and he knew the street names of the intersection closest to the guys- had made note of it every time they’d driven past it. Once he was there, he could find the right house, even if he didn’t know the exact address.

After only a couple of seconds, his phone buzzed again.

 ** _GEOFF [3/17 5:58pm]:  
_** Want one of us to come get you?

Jesus fucking Christ, Geoff sure thought he was a flight risk. He wasn’t _wrong_ , but, so far, this was as close Michael had come to running and it wasn’t like he’d left his phone behind or anything. Hell, his backpack was still at the house. He was doing pretty damn good at not running the fuck away.

For a second, he was annoyed- annoyed that Geoff would think he’d just go like that. After a second, though, he shook it off. Of _course_ Geoff thought that, Michael hadn’t done hardly anything to prove that thought wrong. He didn’t have a right to get pissy about it.

 ** _TO: GEOFF [3/17 5:59pm]:  
_** I’m not far, I’ll find my way back

 ** _GEOFF [3/17 6:00pm]:  
_** Let me know if you change your mind.

Well, at least he wasn’t threatening to send out a search party. Michael supposed that was the best he could hope for.

He finished off his water bottle, threw away his trash, and pulled out his phone. It took him a little while to locate the specific intersection he was looking for, but, once he did, it turned out he really wasn’t that far. Which wasn’t _that_ big a surprise, since he’d pretty much wandered whichever direction looked good and had almost definitely gone around in circles a few times.

Not that he could really remember that, it was all kind of a blur.

Anyway, he wasn’t far from the house at all. He really only needed to make a couple of turns, it was a route he could memorize, so he wouldn’t always have to be pulling off to check the map.

Stepping outside, he shuddered a little at the temperature change, which was stupid because it wasn’t _actually_ that bad, but _damn_ did he wish he’d thought to grab a beanie.

He pulled up his hood, unlocked his bike from the rack, put on his helmet, and pushed off again.

It wasn’t anything at all like the first time. He hadn’t felt like he could possibly pedal hard enough, when he left the guys’ house earlier. But now, he pumped his legs lazily, only as much as he had to to keep moving.

The ride was going to be longer than he thought, but he didn’t mind. Mostly because he was still kind of coming down from the rush, but also because he was dead tired and just didn’t have the energy to go faster.

The light was gradually getting dimmer, but he was sure he’d get back before it was _too_ late. He pulled the sleeves of his jacket down over his hands to keep his fingers from going numb as he pedaled, fingers flexing in the soft fabric.

After the panic and adrenaline, his thoughts felt kind of slow and sluggish. That was alright, though, it wasn’t like he had to do anything but follow the few simple directions he’d memorized. He only had to turn twice before he’d be back at the house.

He didn’t even notice he was hungry until his stomach gave a half-hearted grumble, but that was fine too. There was always food for dinner at the guys’ house, whether it was made or picked up, so all he had to do was get there.

But when he swung onto the street, he saw the garage door was open and that was kind of weird. As he got closer, he made out a familiar hunched form sitting on the bumper of the bigger car, though the purple hoodie was in his lap instead of on his body.

It was with the weirdest since of déjà vu that Michael cruised up the driveway and stopped in front of Ray, brakes squealing a little. Ray didn’t even look up.

“Dude,” Michael unclipped his helmet, pushed his hood back to his shoulders, “you okay?”

Ray’s fingers twitched irritably in the purple fabric of his hoodie as he made a noise in the back of his throat somewhere between a scoff and huff and _that_ was not good. Michael hadn’t known Ray long, hadn’t watched nearly as many videos as he wanted, but he knew Ray didn’t really _get_ angry or annoyed, not outwardly anyway.

“I’m fine.” There was just the slightest bite of sarcasm to the last word. When Ray looked up, Michael was struck by the last time he’d stood over Ray, when they first met. Ray’d been mostly calm then, especially after Michael sat down with him to wait for the guys, had been happy about it, so why-?

… Holy fucking shit.

Ray was an _introvert_. Michael’d known that, but he somehow hadn’t put together that Ray was an introvert with _four significant others_. He _lived_ with them.

Of _course_ he got pissy and weird sometimes- he was surrounded by loud people who never shut the fuck up. It didn’t matter that he loved them, he couldn’t do that _constantly_. But he didn’t have a driver’s license, or a room that was just his, couldn’t go anywhere and recharge.

The garage was silent. The cold, dark weather weighed heavily on the world and made it just that little bit slower. Quieter. A set of keys rested on the bumper, by Ray’s thigh. He must’ve taken them to get his hoodie out of the car. Maybe he’d left it in there on purpose, maybe not, but it was an excuse for him to go somewhere to get a little fucking peace and quiet.

And Michael had rolled up and started talking to him.

Like Gavin had said, the guys trying to cheer him up _would_ make it worse. Because he didn’t need cheering up, didn’t need attention, he needed space to _breathe_. But it wasn’t like he could fucking say that, not to his boyfriends. Michael had never done _any_ romance shit, but he didn’t have to to know ‘I need space’ was practically break-up talk.

So Ray just… sucked it up? Went deeper into his head until the trapped, oppressive feeling tearing at him faded enough that he could function normally?

Michael knew a thing or two about that. It was the whole reason he’d booked it out of the house like it was on fire, a few hours ago.

Ray could push it back until he got better. That’s what Gavin had said, Ray got better on his own. He could push through feeling like he was suffocating until the pressure eased up.

But fuck _that_.

“… give me the keys.”

Ray froze for a second, then looked back up at him, not a shred of comprehension on his face. “What?”

Michael shoved his bike back into its place with the others, pushed down the kickstand, and hung his helmet from the straps on the handlebar. “Give me the keys,” he scooped them up without waiting for Ray to actually work out what he was talking about, “and _get in the car_.”

At first, he wasn’t sure Ray would. But by the time he’d opened the driver’s door and gotten inside, Ray was climbing in next to him.

Ray didn’t seem worried at all. He didn’t even seem curious. A little bemused, maybe, but that was it.

That lasted exactly as long as it took Michael to shove the keys into the ignition and turn over the engine.

“ _What_ -”

It felt weird, to wrap his fingers around the gearshift and yank it into reverse. Just the same way writing and riding a bike had felt.

The car had a fucking _back up camera_. Fucking technology, ladies and gentlemen.

They shot out into the street and Michael put on his seatbelt to make the car stop beeping at him. Flicked the headlights on, adjusted the rearview mirror, pulled the car into drive, and slapped the button to close the door to the garage.

“Where are we _going_?” Ray demanded, fumbling to click his seatbelt into place.

Spinning the wheel without looking over, Michael answered, “I don’t know, but I have a GPS on my phone, so we’ll figure it out eventually.”

Ray had a death grip on the oh-shit handle above his door. Which was fair, the brakes on the car were _way_ more sensitive than Michael was used to and whiplash was a distinct danger. “Since when can you _drive_?”

“Since I was thirteen.” His career as a car thief had been short-lived, since the only chop shop he knew enough to trust got raided just a couple of months in, but he’d learned everything he needed to know.

Didn’t feel like explaining that to Ray, though.

He jumped a little when his phone started buzzing against his thigh. Over and over, not just once, and the little tune he’d picked at random for a ringtone was drifting through the denim, so he fished the phone out of his pocket and passed it to Ray.

Ray looked at the incoming call screen and flinched. “What am _I_ supposed to do with this?”

Knowing you weren’t trapped didn’t always stick when you also knew you had to report your every move.

“Dealer’s choice,” was all Michael said, pulling out of the neighborhood and onto a main street at random.

After staring at the phone for a second more, Ray set his jaw and flicked the switch on the side to put it on silent, then stuffed it into the glove compartment in front of him. When _his_ phone started going off, he did the same thing with it.

“So,” Michael started, signaling so he could pull onto the highway, because why the hell not? “How long do you think we have before they call the cops? Is it long enough to get something to eat? Because I don’t know about you, but I’m fucking famished, dude.”

There was dead silence for three seconds, and then Ray just fucking _lost it_.

Ray didn’t have a loud laugh like Geoff, or a squeaky one, like Gavin. When he laughed, _really_ laughed, he barely made any sound at all, besides sucking in more air whenever he could.

Michael couldn’t exactly watch him, not without accidentally killing them both, but he did see Ray double over in _tears_ out of the corner of his eye and couldn’t help but grin.

That was _way_ better.

“Jesus _Christ_ , Michael,” Ray finally managed, taking off his glasses to rub at his eyes. “I don’t- actually, you know what, fuck it, we’re probably fine as long as we get home before tomorrow. I haven’t eaten either.”

“Any suggestions?”

Sliding his glasses back onto his face, Ray looked out at the road and pointed. “There’s a Taco Bell in three exits.”

“Sure,” Michael said, glancing over his shoulder and switching lanes. “I haven’t spent enough time on the shitter lately.”

“You shut your fucking mouth,” Ray fired back, but he was smiling.


	36. Chapter 36

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I scream, you scream, we ALL scream for E S C A P I S M~
> 
> Aka, this is horrendously unedited and probably a little disjointed, but it felt important to get it out tonight anyway. I hope you enjoy it.

“Dude, get the one on the left!”

After loading up with so much bad Mexican food that Michael wasn’t totally sure _what_ was going to happen to his digestive system later in the evening, he and Ray had dicked around for a while before spotting a theater and deciding to see a movie.

But since they didn’t check their phones first and had no idea when a showing of anything decent would be on, they showed up right after the only tolerable-looking movie had started, so they decided to kill time in the arcade until the next showing.

And if they didn’t beat this fucking level soon, they were probably going to miss the next showing too.

Neither of them wanted to give up, though. They hadn’t exactly talked about it, but they didn’t need to. They just kept going.

It was one of those shooter arcade games, one of probably hundreds of different near-identical ones. Ray was, completely unsurprisingly, as good as it as he was at all other games. On the _other_ hand, he was not as good at watching his back.

“I was protecting you, dipshit, cover your side better!” Ray fired his gun off screen to reload it, then snapped it back up and put a bullet through the zombie’s forehead right before it was able to take him down.

“I can’t fucking watch my side if I’m watching yours too!” Michael gunned down the closest zombie to Ray to prove his point before turning back to the handful that were, admittedly, getting a little too close to him for comfort.

It’d been a long time since Michael had been to an arcade. He had some vague memories of going with his brothers, but nothing he could really pin down.

Going to an arcade with Ray, though? It was amazing. Like there was nothing to worry about, like the very first time they’d sat together with just a 3DS between the two of them. Like they were kids again and it was just that easy.

They were playing in a mostly-abandoned arcade at nearly ten o’clock on a Thursday night. They probably looked like fucking morons, but it didn’t feel even a little off.

The last level of the game was such a clusterfuck of loud noises, gunshot effects, and blood splatter that Michael wasn’t sure he breathed or blinked for the second half of it. Then, in the time it took him to fumble a reload, Ray fired off half a dozen shots and then- fanfare.

Ray being the one to both beat the game and save their asses was not a surprise, but it _was_ fucking _awesome_.

Michael didn’t even think twice about grabbing Ray around the waist until he’d already hoisted him into the air and shouted, “You beautiful bastard!”

To be fair, though, that got a laugh out of Ray and he’d have done _way_ more embarrassing things to make that happen.

Ray looked so much better when Michael set him down. He actually looked like he was _there_ , like he was seeing what was in front of him and knew what was happening. His eyes were bright and, maybe it was just the multicolored lights coming off every machine in the dimly lit room, but his face looked a little flushed too.

Michael didn’t have any illusion that those things had to do with him so much as they had to do with Ray needing to get _out_. Both out of the house and out of his head. Sure, dragging him out in public probably wasn’t ideal for his introversion, but it was better than leaving him to deal with it on his own at the house.

If he didn’t have to keep up the appearance of nothing being wrong, of not being annoyed with the people around him, it helped. And, Michael wanted to think, it also helped that Michael didn’t _want_ anything from him. Not that the guys were pushy or selfish, but they overthought everything.

Sometimes that was good, sometimes it was bad, but the end result was everyone being on edge.

Going out, running away for just a little while, turning off their phones and hiding, that was what they could do. It wasn’t like Ray _wanted_ to run off and never see the guys again. He just wanted to know he _could_.

Michael understood the feeling.

The movie they picked to see was a generic action film with way too many exploding sports cars and gun fights. Michael wasn’t a _huge_ fan of the sound of guns, but their other options were animated kids’ movies, a couple of romcoms, a comedy that he could tell from looking at the _poster_ was shit, and three different horror movies.

So shitty action it was.

They got soda, and popcorn, and candy, and Ray fell asleep before the previews were over.

Michael didn’t really notice at first, not until he registered a gradually-increasing weight on his shoulder and looked over.

Ray was sleeping through some of the loudest dramatic trailers Michael had ever heard. His glasses were slightly askew, his mouth was just a little open, whole face totally slack. One of his arms was trapped between his side and the arm rest, and the other hand was in his lap, fingers curled lightly inward.

He wasn’t relaxed, or even particularly tired-looking. He was just _gone_.

Michael recognized that too. When everything that had been weighing down on you was just fucking _gone_ and the only thing you could think about was heartlessly abandoning consciousness, because there was no other way to let go of the coiled spring of panic.

He shifted a little, so Ray’s head fell a little more comfortably on his shoulder.

Then he stared blankly at the movie screen.

He took in maybe one word in every ten. Now that Ray was out, Michael brain had gone from focusing on helping him to, well. Total panic.

Holy. Fuck.

He had _stolen_ their _car_.

It wasn’t like he regretted it, not really. Ray had _needed_ him, needed to get out and spend some time away from the guys. Michael didn’t feel bad about making that happen, really couldn’t.

Nope, he didn’t regret it. But he was all too aware of how painfully it could bite him in the ass.

He didn’t have a license, was pretty sure the average insurance plan didn’t cover ‘the charity case we took in stole the car’, and hadn’t driven in nearly ten years. What he’d done was not only incredibly stupid, it was also _illegal_.

And yeah, he’d been pissed at the guys for not taking things seriously before, when he knew anyone but him would’ve taken advantage of their trust, but now… well, he’d taken advantage of it. Not for _himself_ , but still.

He felt kinda sick.

But it was already done. He shouldn’t obsess over it, about what disappointment would look like on their faces, about how that conversation would go.

Shouldn’t, but fucking was.

Something exploded on the screen and Michael flinched, then froze when Ray’s head shifted on his shoulder. A warm puff of breath hit his neck, then Ray settled again and Michael deliberately unclenched his fingers from the plastic armrests.

It was worth it. Whatever happened now, it was _worth it_.

 

* * *

 

Michael was never really able to focus on the movie. Not for lack of trying, but the second there was a lull, his mind was right back to entertaining him with worst-case scenarios. Which was pretty damn frustrating.

Ray woke up when the credits started rolling to the dulcet tones of a hard rock instrumental. He shifted stiffly, fumbled to adjust his glasses, and froze in confusion.

“Morning, sunshine.”

It took a few long moments for Ray to register where he was and who he was with. Then he groaned and rubbed the back of his neck. “When did I fall asleep?”

“Toward the beginning. You can sleep through a fuckload of explosions, dude.”

“Ngh…” Ray was clearly still out of it, slipping his hand under his glasses to rub at his eyes. “Sorry.”

“What for drooling on my shoulder? That’s what washing machines are for.”

“Fuck, seriously?”

“Seriously, don’t worry about it. Even if I wanted to straight up fucking burn this one, I have more shirts than I know what to do with these days.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Michael flinched a little. The reminder of how much the guys had done for him rankled more than a little.

Ray didn’t seem to notice though, just sat back in his chair and stared blankly at the screen. “Guess we’d better head back.”

He didn’t seem bad anymore. Just like he wanted to enjoy being gone for a little longer. Which was perfectly fine by Michael.

They sat silently in their seats until the screen turned blindingly blue and the theater employees who came in to clean gave them weird looks.

When they walked out, the building was mostly deserted, which made sense, given it was midnight, or close to it. The sharp bite of cold air was kind of a shock, even though it’d been cool earlier, it’d gotten worse since the sun went down. But hey, upside, the car was stupid easy to find.

They climbed in and Ray yawned so hard his jaw popped audibly. Michael grinned as he turned the ignition. “Still tired?”

“Fuck you, it’s late,” Ray grumbled without heat, sinking deeper into his hoodie while he waited for the car to warm up.

Michael shrugged, well aware that he’d gotten to sleep way later, and pulled out of the parking lot.

The world was so much different late at night. Everything felt abandoned, every car they passed had a reason for being out late. It was a surreal sort of thing, but not bad. Not bad at all.

Now if only he could stop seeing himself out on those streets, it would be _much better_.

“Was the movie any good?” Ray asked, out of nowhere.

Michael stopped himself from looking over, but only just. “I can’t remember the plot, if that tells you anything.”

Ray snorted. “Fair enough… You think the guys are still awake?”

Hesitating for a second, though Ray didn’t exactly sound _nervous_ , Michael answered carefully. “Probably at least one of them, right?”

“Yeah…” Ray’s voice was thoughtful, but not in a bad way. Just like he was trying to make a plan of some kind.

The ride from then on was mostly silent. Neon lights faded gradually, as they got closer to the residential areas, and it felt so much later when they finally pulled onto the right street.

“Hey, no cop cars, that’s a good sign,” Michael said, hoping that came across as a joke.

Scoffing, Ray shifted in his seat as they pulled into the driveway. “They wouldn’t call the cops unless we were gone way longer.”

“Thank fuck for that,” Michael shifted the car into park in the garage, a little surprised no one had come out of the house yet, “even if I get kicked out, at least I won’t get arrested.”

He didn’t even have time to pull the keys out of the ignition before Ray’s hand clamped down on his wrist with a grip that was honestly really fucking strong. Jumping a little, he looked up and met Ray’s eyes.

Never, not once, had he ever seen Ray look so serious. It wasn’t like he was sunshine and rainbows constantly or anything, but Michael had never even imagined that dark, flat gaze mercilessly boring into his eyes.

“If anyone even joked about that, _you_ wouldn’t be the one getting kicked out.”

Michael knew he probably looked like an idiot, eyes wide, mouth open, just staring at Ray as his heart pounded away in his ribcage.

After a beat, Ray let go and got out of the car. Michael hurriedly unbuckled his seatbelt and followed.

The house was dark, but he’d expected that. A faint blue light drifted out into the hall from the second guest room and he’d expected that too.

Ray was a little ahead of him and ducked into the room just as he rounded the corner. By the time he made it to the doorway, Ray was leaning over the back of the couch and talking in a low voice.

The biggest surprise was that he was talking to Geoff and not Ryan.

Michael stood there, hand gripping the doorframe, half in and half out of the room and not sure what to do with himself, just _watching_.

Not that he could really see either of their faces. The angle was just perfect to keep him from that. But he could see it when a heavily tattooed hand curled around the back of Ray’s neck and pulled him down for a kiss.

Michael had lived with five dudes in a relationship for _weeks_ and he _still_ had no idea where to look when they kissed each other.

There was a light in Ray’s eyes that hadn’t been there before when he turned back toward the door. He didn’t say anything when he stepped out into the hall, but he did meet Michael’s eyes and reach out just a little to touch his wrist.

Then he was gone, near-silent steps fading further into the house, leaving Michael alone with Geoff, who’d stood up and was coming toward him.

Michael swallowed hard, bracing himself, because Geoff’s face was doing that impossible-to-read thing again and he really never had any idea what the guy was going to come up with next-

“Thank you.”

… the _fuck_?

“What?”

“I don’t know what the hell you did,” Geoff had a serious, but somehow soft expression on his face, and he was looking at Michael like he was impossible again, “but _thank you_.”

What the _actual_ fuck? “… I stole your car? And your boyfriend?”

“I don’t care if you _blew_ my stolen boyfriend in the back of my stolen car, he looked a million fucking times better just now than he has in _days_ and he was barely conscious.”

Shaking his head to rid it of the images that it was gleefully throwing at him, Michael forced himself to focus. “How the fuck are you not pissed?”

“Don’t get me wrong, I was pissed earlier.” Geoff crossed his arms and shifted his weight, raising an eyebrow. “I had no idea where the hell you two went and you weren’t answering your phones. But you came back, you’re okay, and, hey, if Ray finally has someone who he will fucking talk to when he gets like this, I don’t even care if he can’t talk to us-”

“Ray didn’t talk to me.”

Geoff froze, eyebrows furrowing. “What?”

 _Shit_. Michael shouldn’t have said that. It wasn’t like it was a secret he was supposed to be keeping or anything, but it still felt too… personal, too private, like a violation, to talk about why Ray had been upset. But at the same time, he didn’t want Geoff to think Ray had picked Michael over his boyfriends or some shit.

“He- it’s not like we had a fucking heart to heart or anything.”

“Then why-” Geoff stopped, face contorting like he was forcing himself to stop talking. Like he’d felt the same thing Michael had, like talking about this was betraying Ray somehow.

But… but even when Michael was gone, this would still be a problem. Maybe when he moved out and this happened, he could drag Ray back to his place until he felt better. But they still needed to know, they still didn’t _understand_.

So… so maybe he could just state the facts? Let Geoff figure out the same thing he had?

“Ray’s an introvert,” He said bluntly, watching Geoff look even _more_ confused, for a second. “He’s an introvert who’s dating _four people_.”

There were a couple of seconds when Geoff’s face went totally blank, then his eyes widened. “I’m an idiot.” He put his face in his hands. “Fuck, we’re _all_ idiots. Why didn’t he _say_ anything?”

“Seriously, dude? How well do you think ‘I need space’ would’ve gone over?”

“It wouldn’t’ve.” Geoff dragged his hands down his face, sighed, then stepped forward and reached out-

Michael had been trying to completely ignore the urge to flinch lately, and it was because he was focusing so hard on that that he didn’t realize what was happening until Geoff’s hands were on either side of his face.

“Thank you,” Geoff said again, but this time he was close, _so close_ , holy fuck.

For a split second, Michael was frozen. His heart gave a sick thud, his entire body going cold, and then the warm fingers were sliding off his face and Geoff was stepping away, back toward the couch.

Before Michael could even recover, Geoff was pulling a paper sack off the couch, where it had been sitting out of sight, reached inside, and pulled out something Michael couldn’t quite recognize in the light of the TV.

He recognized it when Geoff grabbed his hand and pressed it into it, though. A plastic bottle, a pretty hefty one, with a vaguely familiar brand name and the word ‘Multi-Vitamin’ emblazoned on it.

After staring for a few seconds, he flicked his eyes up at Geoff. He’d practically forgotten the physical, felt like it’d happened days ago, not that afternoon. And he didn’t have _any_ idea how Geoff had found out-

“You left the info the doctor gave you in Burnie’s car,” Geoff explained, seeing Michael’s confusion. “He gave it to us to give you and we stopped by the store on the way home and figured we might as well pick those up.”

Michael did not any in fucking way believe that. But he curled his fingers around the bottle anyway and tried not to think about what else they’d read. It wasn’t like Geoff and Jack weren’t painfully aware of what he looked like under his baggy clothes.

Still, he forced himself to say “Thanks.”

Geoff’s expression went all soft at that, in a weird sort of way Michael’d never seen before, had no idea _what_ it meant.

And when he said “You’re welcome.”, it was with so much weight that Michael almost asked what the hell he meant.

Almost. But Geoff had literally waved off a crime a couple of minutes ago and it was starting to feel like he wouldn’t understand a bad thing if it slapped him in the face (or punched his boyfriend in front of him), so Michael didn’t want to know what Geoff had deluded himself into thinking Michael was.

In the morning, he’d probably think about it and freak out about it. But right now, Ray was better, Geoff wasn’t mad, and Michael didn’t feel like crawling out of his skin anymore.

He’d take the fucking win.


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW getting this chapter done was like pulling teeth. It's harder to write the parts of the story I haven't explicitly planned out in advance, so I'm sorry updates have slowed down so much, it's because of that, lol.
> 
> But we're getting there! Pretty soon we'll be in areas I've thought about a little more, so things should pick back up right in time for the aniversary!
> 
> (it's been almost a year since I first posted this you guys, what the FUCK?)

“Already?”

There was laughter in Burnie’s voice when he answered. “Dude, it’s been five weeks since you got here, it took plenty of time.”

“… Are you fucking serious?”

“Well, it’ll be five weeks on Friday.”

Pacing the living room, Michael rolled his eyes and pressed the phone a little harder against his face. “Okay, fine, whatever. So, like… there’s nothing else?”

“Barring any sudden disasters, you start work on Monday. Word in the office is Gavin’s already trying to figure out how to turn your desk into a prank.”

Mental fucking note. “So there’s nothing I have to do on my end?”

“Aside from show up, no.” There was a sort of rushing noise in the background, like Burnie was driving somewhere. “Oh, hey, actually. We have a cookout every Friday. You should come this week, get to know some of the other people at the company so you don’t get thrown in at the deep end on Monday.”

Pausing, Michael frowned. “ _Every_ Friday?”

“Well, most. Sometimes not enough people can come for it to be worth it.”

But the guys had been there, with him, every Friday, except when they were out of town. So they’d skipped out on a weekly tradition just to babysit his ass.

Fucking great.

“Yeah, okay,” he said, before he could really think about it. The more he could get the guys’ lives back to normal, the better. Besides, it was only Tuesday. It was wasn’t like he had to go _now_. “Smart.”

“Awesome, it’s been hard to keep them from storming the house to meet you as it is.”

“What the fuck have you guys been _saying_ about me?”

That got a laugh, even if he hadn’t been trying for one. “Barely anything, which is what’s driving them fucking crazy. Listen, I gotta go, but I’ll see you Friday, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Michael stared blankly at the cold tile underneath his feet. “See you then.”

His phone was heavy in his hand when he let it fall to his side, warm against his skin.

It wasn’t like he didn’t _want_ to get started working at Rooster Teeth. It was just, the closer it got, the more _real_ it became.

He’d been doing what he could, with learning the videos, but he still hadn’t _shown_ them to anyone (Gavin being a cheat did not count), so he didn’t even know if he was doing _that_ right.

Just had to keep going. If he fucked up, better to know it sooner than later.

Rubbing a hand over his eyes, he went to grab a Red Bull out of the fridge.

 

* * *

 

He couldn’t sleep.

Too many Red Bulls, probably. He was fucking _exhausted_ , but his legs kept jittering under the covers.

With a frustrated growl, he pushed himself off the mattress, sliding out from under the blankets and onto his feet.

Too much in his head, too much under his skin. He wasn’t sure what he should do, _could_ do. But he knew he couldn’t just lay there.

It was cold outside the blankets, but it always fucking was at night. Maybe that’d be different in summer? It’d be interesting to see, if he was still there.

He knew he’d need to get his own apartment as soon as possible, but he didn’t have _any_ idea how long that’d take, especially with paying the guys back and paying rent, which he was going to do if he had to sneak the money into their wallets.

But what then? He still barely knew anything about what he was supposed to be doing. Who knew if he could hold onto this job that long?

Scrubbing at his face with both hands, he sighed heavily, feeling the warmth of it on his palms.

Later. One thing at a time.

Sleep.

The hardwood of the hall was freezing on his bare feet, which woke him up even _more_ , which was horseshit, but he wanted a fucking drink. Maybe he could work, but he’d have to check and see if Ryan was up. If he was, and he saw the light in the guest room, that was _not_ a conversation that would be fun.

Sure enough, when he got to the kitchen, he saw the same faint blue light from the hall that’d greeted him and Ray a few days ago.

It wasn’t like he didn’t know what he’d find, but his feet still dragged him over anyway.

He stopped in the doorway, looking in at near-silent infomercials on the TV and the back of Ryan’s head. Even without seeing his face, it felt like Ryan was just as tired as he was. Something about the way he was holding himself.

Exhausted or not, Ryan was still, apparently, creepily aware of what was going on around him, because Michael hadn’t been there more than a few seconds before he turned to look over his shoulder.

“Hey,” yup, his eyes were half-lidded and tired. He didn’t even bother talking after the initial word either, just waved lazily with one hand, beckoning Michael in.

Not really sure what possessed him to agree, since he’d didn’t have something important to talk about or anything, he hesitantly walked in. The couch was just as soft as he remembered, and there was a small pillow that had been pounded flat over the years for him to lean against.

Ryan sort of sluggishly reached for the remote and turned the brightness on the TV _way_ down, which was fucking saintly of him, made it easier on the eyes.

The blanket was still draped over the back of the couch; Ryan pulled it down unfolded it with a snap of his wrist and the next thing Michael knew, it was settling down over his shoulders.

Oh.

That was.

Swallowing hard, he gripped the edges of the blanket tightly, watching Ryan settle back against the couch, like he hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary at all. He didn’t have a laptop tonight, looked too tired for even that.

That sucked.

He wanted… wanted to help. Help Ryan sleep. He wanted it suddenly and powerfully and it was a little bit terrifying.

But Ryan was practically a zombie and had still gone out of his way to make sure Michael was comfortable. So Michael could ignore being a little terrified.

There wasn’t anything he could _do_ , really, though. He didn’t have anything to offer except just… being there.

Ryan was tipping his head back against the back of the couch and shutting his eyes, though, so maybe all Michael had to do was be quiet.

He didn’t think he could sleep there, but that was okay. He wouldn’t be able to sleep in the guest room either and, this way, he could keep an eye on Ryan.

Not that he could really do anything either way. But it was better to be here with Ryan than back in the guest room, worrying about how he was doing.

Gradually, he relaxed against the armrest of the couch. Good place to sleep or not, it was comfortable.

For a while, what felt like an eternity, he watched the dim figures on the TV move around. The volume wasn’t high enough to hear what they were selling and his glasses were still in the guest room, so he couldn’t see either.

It didn’t really matter though, he could practically fill in the blanks for any number of products. Same as the last time they’d done this, it all sort of blurred together, until he was in and out.

His body was heavy and tired and knew he’d fallen asleep at least once. The biggest change he could pinpoint was he wasn’t curled up against the armrest anymore.

The pillow was under his head still, propped against the armrest, but his legs were stretched out across the length of the couch. He didn’t know when he’d moved, just that he was at a weird, but not uncomfortable angle, enough to put his feet in Ryan’s lap.

For a second he thought maybe he should move. But a heavy line of warmth meant one of Ryan’s arms was resting on top of his right leg, so there was no way he’d be able to pull away without waking him up.

Well, it wasn’t like he was really _asleep_. He just had to wait for Ryan to shift enough to move his arm.

In the meanwhile, silver lining, his toes weren’t cold anymore.

 

* * *

 

Waking up was a little jarring.

Well. Actually, it was slow, like he had to fight for consciousness. What _was_ jarring was realizing Ryan was gone.

He had a vague memory, of the room being just a little brighter, of low voices, Ryan moving slowly, carefully. It was foggy, but he remembered forcing himself awake enough to say something, so Ryan wouldn’t have to worry he was waking him up.

Geoff had been there, looked down at him over the back of the couch. He’d said something, grinning like an utter bastard, and Michael had almost definitely said something back.

But he couldn’t remember and the house was quiet and he was still tired, so he just buried his face in the pillow and tried to pretend nothing had happened.

 

* * *

 

"Come on, Michael,” Gavin whined, and it was a really good thing the whole kitchen island was between the two of them. “You have to have finished it by now!”

“Why are you such a bitch?” It was a weak retort, but he was hoping the conversation would die and he could go back to burning his fingers on fajita meat.

Jack was leaning against the counter by the stove with his own plate, but his full focus was on what Gavin had said. “I didn’t realize you were making entire videos, I thought you were just practicing.” The words were calm, but there was a general feeling of barely-leashed excitement to him. Which was _terrifying_.

“I _was_.”

“I want to see them.” Geoff had apparently forgotten the food in front of him existed. “Dude, seriously. Show us what you can do.”

It was a lot of work not to obviously cringe. “It’s not that impressive, it’s really basic shit.”

“Show us _anyway_ , fuck dude, you’re new at this, finishing _anything_ is impressive.”

Goddammit. Arguing about it anymore would just drive up expectation. He didn’t want to disappoint them, but he wasn’t going to win this fight. No chance in hell.

He kinda wished Ryan was there to run interference for him. But that was a shit way to think and anyway, Ryan was out with Ray. Michael wasn’t sure why and hadn’t felt like he could ask, really.

At least this would give them some more realistic expectations about what he could do.

Rubbing at his eyes behind his glasses, he grumbled, “Fucking alright already, I’ll show you after we’re done eating.”

Gavin’s grin somehow wasn’t as smug as Michael had expected, which was more than a little weird, especially after Michael mouthed ‘such a bitch’ at him.

Even after they’d finished eating, Michael in no way planned to stick around to see their reactions. He led them back to the guest room and pulled up the more polished of the two videos, sure. But then he left. Watching them watch him yell at video games would just be embarrassing as hell.

So he sat on the couch with his phone for a few minutes and even managed to get almost into reading some forum posts on the site before loud, hurried footsteps from the hall had him whipping his head up.

In the next second, Geoff was staring down at him, his face doing that totally unreadable thing again, which was plenty enough to give Michael an adrenaline rush.

But he only said, “Do you have any idea how much fucking potential you have?”

Okay, that was fine. ‘Potential’ wasn’t an obligatory compliment and it wasn’t disappointment either, that was fine, better than expected.

And then Geoff had to go and say, “We need to make that a series.”

“What the _fuck_?”

“We don’t have to do it right away,” Jack said, wandering in from the hall, with a now _very_ smug Gavin in tow, “but he’s right. They’re already calling you Rage Quit and that’s exactly the kind of content they want.”

Michael stared at him, Gavin, Geoff. “… what the fuck is wrong with you people?”

A hand landed heavy on his shoulder and THAT was weird because it wasn’t Ryan and Ryan was generally the only one who did stuff like that, but he didn’t jump and Jack didn’t look nervous standing over him.

“Think about it?”

There was no way he’d be able to _stop_ thinking about it. Wondering what in the hell they’d seen in it. He needed to rewatch it, like. Immediately.

But Jack was giving him a soft look and Geoff was still unreadable, so he needed to play at normal right now.

“Sure, whatever.”

What the fuck.


	38. Chapter 38

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright. *cracks knuckles* Time for an ACTUAL author's note.
> 
> So. As you all should be aware. I was not involved in the RT fandom all that long before starting this story. So my knowledge of everything before the last year or so is utter garbage. I've got bits and pieces, but I have no idea who was where when or anything like that. And I COULD spend my days researching away and building a concrete timeline based on what I can find, OR I can actually write this story. I chose the latter option.
> 
> What this means is, if you have encyclopedic knowledge of RT, you're probably going to spot some glaring problems with the timeline as things go on. But fuck it, this is already an AU and this way I can fuck with the timeline the way I want to make the story as fun as possible.
> 
> That's not to say I'm not going to stick as close to what I know to be true as I can, but I wanted to let you guys know that I know I'm probably wrong in a lot of of areas, so when you reach a point and go 'hey, X employee wasn't hired until a year after this', I hope you can just acknowledge that Missy is a lazy idiot and we can all go on our merry ways.
> 
> That said, I deeply love so many of the RT employees that I'm super happy I get to expand who I get to write in this chapter. Don't worry, there's still going to be an almost insane focus on the main six, but it'd be doing everyone a huge disservice not to acknowledge how amazing everyone else is and how important they are to each other.
> 
> Enjoy!

It was Friday afternoon.

It was Friday afternoon and Michael was standing in front of the closet, staring at more clothes than he had owned possibly ever, and agonizing over what to wear to a cookout.

Embarrassing, yes. But true.

Because Burnie had said he hadn’t told them anything? But first impressions were a thing. And he had some plain clothes, but most of what he had was Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter branded. And he could not for the fucking life of him decide if wearing something like that would be good or bad.

Hell he wasn’t even totally sure when most of that had turned up in the closet, but he suspected Gavin, Geoff, or possibly both.

Would wearing a Rooster Teeth shirt look like he was trying too hard? Would wearing an Achievement Hunter shirt be too on-the-nose? Most people there would be wearing them, probably, going by the guys’ wardrobe choices.

Finally, he settled on a black shirt with a green target. According to Jack, it was Achievement Hunter’s old logo. Hopefully it wouldn’t stand out too much.

They’d been sending him texts all day. Most of the guys wouldn’t be coming back to the house before the cookout, but Ryan was coming to pick him up. Which was a fucking godsend, because he was nervous enough without being in a vehicle with all five of them at once. And Ryan would probably have some decent advice to give, or at the very least not poke at Michael’s nerves.

He didn’t know why he was so fucking anxious. No one at that company was a threat or anything.

But it was like when he met Lindsay. A sort of deer-in-the-headlights feeling because everyone he was going to meet tonight knew sort of who he was, according to Burnie. And what did you say to people who already had opinions about you?

It wasn’t a great feeling.

Most of the afternoon passed in that same too-fast, too-slow way that the morning before the physical had. On some level, it was actually worse. Because he hadn’t cared what the doctor would think of him, that didn’t have any impact on him or anyone he knew.

Burnie’s suggestion that he meet everyone _before_ Monday was making more and more sense.

When Ryan finally showed up, he didn’t even pull into the garage, just texted that he was in front of the house.

It was warm outside again, thank fucking god. Michael didn’t even remotely need a jacket, just the wallet and phone in his pockets. It was still really fucking weird to go places without having his backpack constantly on, but it was kinda nice, in a strange way. Made him feel light.

“Hey.” Ryan looked way more well-rested, must have had an easy time going to sleep the night before, which made since considering how tired he must have been.

“Hey.” Holy shit this was really happening.

“Nervous?” Ryan asked, and he someone managed to make it sound totally casual, even as he pulled back onto the road.

Michael shrugged, tried not to make it too obvious. “I mean, kinda. More like I don’t know what to expect.”

Ryan laughed a little under his breath. “Yeah, that’s not going to change even when you start working with us. Every day we walk into that office with no fucking clue what’s going to happen.”

Two fucking sentences and he was so much calmer. “Well fuck, when you put it _that_ way.”

Grinning, Ryan switched lanes. “You’ve probably already seen a good amount of the people you’re going to meet in videos. That’s not to say there’s not a lot of behind the scenes people, but in Achievement Hunter, even they’re in videos sometimes. It’s not like you’re going in blind.”

That was true. And it helped more than Michael wanted to admit.

What helped even more was that the cookout was, apparently, happening at the office. Michael’d had it in his head that they’d be going to Burnie’s actual place, but no, looked like the office wasn’t just a place to work.

He’d already _been_ to the office. It was neutral ground, didn’t belong to any one person. It was _perfect_.

Even when his feet hit the asphalt of the parking lot, he could already hear the faint sounds of people somewhere nearby. He couldn’t see them, couldn’t make out any words or single voices, so they were probably on the far side of the building, but he could _hear_ them.

A distant, faint clamor of voices that were… happy. Relaxed. He didn’t have to hear the words if he could hear the tone and everyone just sounded so _comfortable_.

“Ready?” he didn’t notice when Ryan had come to stand beside him, but there he was.

Instead of answering, Michael walked forward, up to the building and through the door.

Coming into the entryway again was kinda surreal. The door to the guys’ office was closed, the dark gap beneath it said it was abandoned. Farther in, near the kitchen, he could hear people, though.

He walked into the kitchen and there were a couple of people by the fridge and…

The tension bled out of him so suddenly that he’d have fallen over if he hadn’t stopped walking.

They were just people.

Yes, he’d been nervous, but he’d been building it up in his head so much he’d forgotten these were just _people_. Important people, yes, because they were going to be his coworkers, but still.

Maybe he was the equivalent of a feral child around the guys sometimes, but they were something different, he hadn’t ever actually _met_ them, they just suddenly _were_. Were chasing after him and bringing him home and cleaning him up and making him take vitamins. They weren’t so much people as forces of nature.

But Michael could deal with _people_. He hadn’t exactly had a social life, but you didn’t get to be shy when you lived on the streets- you had to interact with people to live, to get shit done. As soon as he’d been old enough to blend in as a college kid, getting free food had been a hell of a lot easier.

And he didn’t even have to get these people to _like_ him. That’d be good, sure, but he just had to make sure they didn’t _dis_ like him. He could still be an asshole, Burnie said most of them were assholes too, just not bad ones, and they seemed to get along okay.

Michael could handle _people_.

He was still kind of basking in that revelation when one of the people in the kitchen noticed them. She was a pretty, short blonde who smiled and walked over quickly to hold out her hand. “You must be Michael, I’m Kara.”

Kara’s hand was small and soft and there was nothing in her face or body language that said she had any idea what the fuck his background was, or that she cared, or that she was anything but happy he was there.

For a second, he loved her so desperately that it hurt.

He knew how to do this. How to shake her hand and smile and say it was nice to meet her too and even mean it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ryan give him a thoughtful look, but that was the only reaction.

She quickly introduced him to a big guy named Adam, another big guy named Adam, and a tall, skinny dude who didn’t look like he knew he was awake.

“Joel,” he introduced himself as, when they shook hands, and Michael’s eyes almost bugged out of his skull.

“You’re Caboose,” he said, and he’d meant it as a question, but it hadn’t come out that way. For some reason it was a surprise. The voice was unmistakable and he’d never pictured what Caboose’s voice actor would look like, but it wasn’t the man in front of him.

The Adam with the beard and the nose ring laughed while Joel scratched at the back of his neck, looking sheepish for some reason. “Ah, yeah.”

“Come on,” Kara said, gesturing for them to follow her. “Everyone else is this way.”

Michael had had an idea of the Rooster Teeth offices from RT Life videos, but it still caught him off guard that there was a whole setup out one side of the building for barbecuing.

Well, maybe not barbecuing specifically, despite the grill. But there were picnic tables and several visible coolers, despite the fact that he was sure he’d seen a fridge inside. And there were people milling around, looking like they were nothing but thrilled to be spending their Friday evening where they worked.

It looked like Gus was manning the grill and Geoff and Jack were nearby, carrying on an absentminded conversation with him. Michael’s eyes automatically sought out Gavin and Ray, who were talking to a dark-haired guy he didn’t recognize.

He was looking back at everyone else when he saw Gavin notice him and start to move like he was going to come over, but Michael didn’t want any of them thinking he needed a chaperone to not fly off the handle at a fucking cookout.

Kara had moved over to a table occupied by people he’d actually met, so he followed.

“Hey, Michael,” Kerry said, giving him a huge grin. Lindsay turned around in her seat to follow Kerry’s line of sight and she smiled too and something in his chest eased. Those two had seen him when he was fresh out of New Jersey and they didn’t seem to give a flying fuck either.

There was another guy nearby, who’d been standing on one leg, with the other foot up on the bench of the picnic table, leaning down while he talked to them, a beer bottle dangling loosely from one hand, but now he looked up and grinned and, wow.

He had dark hair and a scruffy beard and smiled like he’d just gotten the best news ever. Michael had known about this guys’ existence all of two seconds and he already had a sneaking suspicion that all of his smiles were that big and that genuine, which sounded fucking exhausting.

He straightened up and rounded the table and fuck was he tall. “Hey man, good to finally meet you. I’m Miles.” Miles shook hands like he was giving you a hug- firm and encompassing and warm.

Michael stood there and shook his hand and pretended to be normal while he pushed aside the realization that there was no way he was going to work here and _not_ be taken in completely by all of these people. He could freak out about that later. “Hey.”

The sunshine smile didn’t dim by a single watt at his lackluster response. It was starting to weird him out a little.

He wound up sitting at the table after that and folded into a conversation about old Nintendo games that kept getting interrupted when people came over to introduce themselves. At some point Miles passed him a beer and, fuck, if there was a better time for his first drink, he couldn’t think of it.

Beer was fucking disgusting, but so was Red Bull and he was well versed in just ignoring that sort of thing, at this point. Lindsay must have been able to tell he wasn’t used to it, though, because she laughed at the look on his face.

After a few minutes, it occurred to him to ask, “Where’s Burnie?”

“Ah, he and a couple other people headed to the barbecue store a little while ago, apparently they were out of something.” Miles had taken the seat next to him and was half sprawled on the table. “Should be back any minute now.”

Practically on fucking cue, the door to the office opened and Burnie walked out, a grocery bag held loosely in one hand.

He locked eyes with Michael and grinned, detouring over to their table. “Hey.”

Michael gave a little wave, not sure how he was meant to respond to that. Fortunately, he didn’t have to.

“Hey asshole,” was Gus’s way of greeting Burnie. “Took your damn time.”

“Oh man, Gus,” Burnie completely ignored the insult with what looked like the grace of a lot of practice. “Guess what I found at the barbecue store?”

“Is it the seasoning I need? Because if not, you’re going right the fuck back.”

Rolling his eyes, Burnie reached into the bag and tossed Gus a nondescript bottle, then reached back in and pulled out a small plastic container filled with bright red peppers. “Did you know they carried ghost chilis?”

“What the fuck?” Gus grabbed the box and read the label. “Why on earth did you buy them? We can’t use them for anything, I’m pretty sure we’d have to make everybody sign a fucking consent form if we put them on food.”

“I thought we could use them for a video or something. You know, the ghost pepper challenge.” Burnie protested, though he looked like he was reconsidering.

“You’re gonna have to find someone masochistic enough to eat one for that to work out and I really fucking doubt anyone here hates themselves that much.”

“I’ll do it.”

It wasn’t until everyone in earshot was staring at him, including Geoff and Jack, that Michael realized he’d said that out loud.

“Are you fucking insane?” Gus asked, looking like he was trying to figure out if Michael actually was, or if he was just stupid.

Geoff had one hand over his face and Jack looked like he was about to object and fuck that, he wasn’t a _kid_.

With new resolve, Michael shrugged. “It’s just food.”

Burnie was opening his mouth to say something when a heavy arm draped around Michael’s shoulders and pulled him closer.

“I’ll do it too,” Miles said, and his ever present grin had an edge of mania to it now, like he knew it was a terrible idea and that made it even _more_ exciting. When Michael blinked at him in surprise, the expression went a little soft but didn’t lose any of its intensity. “What? I’m not gonna make you do it alone, dude.”

These people were going to kill him.

“How about you talk about this after the food's done,” Lindsay said, with a tone to her voice like they were all being idiots. “Last I checked, the grill’s still going.”

Gus swore under his breath and took the bottle of seasoning back to the grill, but Burnie stared at Michael and Miles for a second before shrugging. “Alright, if you two still feel like doing it later, we’ll make a video.”

Michael’s heart gave one hard thud at the realization that he was going to make his first video with Rooster Teeth tonight.

But only one.


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! This is the second time we've reached a point in the story where all I have from here on is a vague outline of what I want to happen, so please bear with me if updates slow down a bit over the next few weeks while I'm figuring out how I want everything to go down. I'll absolutely do my best to avoid another month with no updates, but I'm also not going to rush things.
> 
> That said, I hope you enjoy the chapter!

An hour and a half later, Michael had a much deeper respect for grilling and was watching people set up lights and recording stuff in the office kitchen.

Twenty minutes ago, they’d all been joking around outside, but the second something work related came up, they ran like a well-oiled machine.

He was starting to get legitimately excited about working at Rooster Teeth. Not like he hadn’t been before; he’d been a fan of Red vs Blue and liked the content Achievement Hunter made, and it was a surprisingly good living. But now that he was learning the people that he’d be around, that he’d work with, he was starting to understand why they all wanted to hang out after hours on a Friday.

It was amazing.

Jack was still shooting him concerned looks from the other side of the bar, but had seemed to decide against trying to stop him, which was no small relief.

Michael honestly didn’t get what the big deal was, but he was trying to ignore the concerned stares. He had his back to one of the kitchens thin columns, leaning back against it and watching Burnie and Kara talking near the island.

Oven mitts and sunglasses had been laid out and there was a lockbox nearby. It was hard to say if all this being whipped up on the spot was ingenuity or a long-practiced skill.

“How bad do you think it’s going to be?”

Tilting his head back, Michael stared up at Miles. “I dunno. But we don’t have to worry about it until after we eat it.”

Miles made a noise in the back of his throat and Michael had to admit to the tiniest twinge of wariness as he saw sugar packets and glasses of milk being set out.

But it was just a fucking _pepper_. Maybe two inches long. It couldn’t be _that_ bad.

When the camera started rolling, he’d expected some kind of nerves. But all he could really focus on was how fucking overboard Burnie was going with his ‘pepper protection gear’ and how everyone looking on (aside from those who had some mild worry going on) looked like they were gleefully awaiting a trainwreck.

Burnie introduced him as Michael ‘Rage Quit’ Jones and Miles was apparently familiar enough to the audience not to need that much of an introduction.

Before long, both he and Miles had a small, bright red pepper held by the stem in their hands.

“They’re worse than pepper spray,” Gus warned before thoughtfully offering, “so if you want, we can pepper spray you in the face instead of-”

“You can pepper spray me in the _mouth_ ,” Michael countered, really starting to wonder what the fuck was the deal with the peppers, though it wasn’t like he wasn’t about to find out.

And then everyone moved out of the shot and Burnie was saying, “Gentlemen, first of all, you _don’t_ have to do this. Secondly, good luck.”

“This is the stupidest thing ever,” Miles muttered, while Michael tapped their peppers together with a sarcastic ‘cheers’.

Right before he lifted it to his mouth, he heard a semi-frantic. “Just a bite- just a bite!”

Fuck that. Go hard or go home.

There were audible gasps when he shoved the entire pepper in his mouth and bit it off at the stem, which was fucking hilarious. He couldn’t pinpoint who said his name in genuine horror while he concentrated on chewing and swallowing as fast as he could, but that was also fucking hilarious.

At first, it wasn’t spicy at all. It almost reminded him of the bell pepper that he and Ryan had eaten that one time, just sweeter. It was actually pretty good.

And then the heat started kicking in.

He tried to make the grab for the nearest glass of milk as casual as possible.

The pepper wasn’t even in his mouth any more, he’d swallowed it immediately. But- it… there weren’t even words to describe the feeling. Hot, sure. If Godzilla was a gecko.

“Reaction?”

“It’s getting hot,” Miles said, holding himself kind of stiffly.

Michael stared into his glass of milk and didn’t look up. “It’s- it’s getting warm.” It had only been a few seconds. It was definitely going to get worse, he’d save reacting for _that_.

Miles coughed a little and checked his own pulse.

“What you think your heart’s gonna fucking stop?” Michael asked with a laugh. Focusing on pain made it worse. Making fun of Miles could only help him.

“Don’t even, dude,” Miles paused, exhaling deliberately, like he was trying to keep the heat from getting worse by _breathing_ too hard. “You ate the whole damn thing.”

And drinking milk only helped while it was in your mouth and for the split second after you swallowed it, apparently.

Everyone was staring and that wasn’t so bad as long as he didn’t open up the freezer and start licking the inside of it, like he wanted to.

His skin was starting to feel clammy and he was fighting really hard to keep his eyes from watering, but he kept his shoulders relaxed and knew it didn’t look like it was affecting him.

Still, that wasn’t really fair to Miles.

“It’s pretty hot,” he allowed, doing the same thing as Miles with the breathing and trying not to aggravate his mouth and throat any more than he had to.

“Yeah it’s pretty ha-hgg…” Miles cut himself off, shaking his head and grabbing for his own glass of milk.

“Explain how you’re feeling,” said… someone, Michael couldn’t see them on the other side of the lights and didn’t know everyone’s voices yet.

“Pain. Uhh, regret.” How Miles was still being loud enough to be heard was beyond Michael, but fuck, it was probably part of the guy’s personality. “Shame. Indigestion.”

That got everyone laughing, which was great because that meant they weren’t paying attention to Michael, who was trying really fucking hard to focus on blocking it out.

Pain wasn’t a big deal, mostly, but there were lots of different kinds and two very distinct categories. The second category, when you were sick or had been hurt was just… yeah it sucked, but it was just pain. You dealt with it, if you focused on it enough, questioned the nature of it, you could make it go away almost completely.

The first category was what happened when you were _actively_ being hurt. And there wasn’t a whole lot you could do about it because every single instinct you had would be _screaming_ at you to stop letting yourself get hurt what the fuck are you thinking?

Unfortunately, the fireball in his mouth was part of the second category.

“It’s pretty bad,” Miles said, turning to look down at him. Michael knew he should probably say something, but all he could really do was breathe out some of the heat. “I can’t imagine where you are right now.”

Ah fuck, his eyes were watering even more now. He looked down at his glass of milk, saw something shift out of the corner of his eyes, and looked back up to see a lens pointed directly at him. He forced himself to smile because like fuck he was going to _cry_ in his first video.

And thank god for Burnie, who wandered over and grabbed for the rest of Miles’s pepper, still wearing those fucking oven mitts. “Let me see that.”

“You wanna try it?” Mile’s asked with a grin that only avoided being sadistic because it was _Miles_.

Burnie didn’t answer, but he did lift the end of the pepper to his nose carefully while someone in the group of people behind the lights chanted ‘do it!’. He then immediately flinched away, bringing one oven mitt up to cover his face.

“Ugh, it hurt my nose!” Then, to Michael, “The whole thing, seriously?”

“I don’t think he’s ever felt more alive,” Miles said with a grin.

And it was true that, past the burning, there was something swelling that was almost, but not quite, like adrenaline. It didn’t totally negate the pain, but it sure as shit gave him something to focus on.

Still, though. “Goddamn, it’s so hot.”

When he turned back, Burnie had bitten off the tiniest possible bit of the pepper. Grinning, Michael took one solid step back, ostensibly to get out of the way as Burnie handed the rest of the pepper back to Miles, but mostly so he wouldn’t get singed when the older man spontaneously combusted.

When the sweet faded and the heat kicked in, Burnie last all of three seconds.

“Oh _fuck that_.” Burnie said, spitting out the pepper into the trashcan that had been dragged out in case anyone need to puke. He stared down at his oven mitts like they had betrayed him. “No, I have shit to live for!” His entire face twisted in horrific realization when the spice didn’t immediately leave. “Ah, dammit!”

Michael almost choked on his milk when Burnie rushed out of the room.

Kara turned to follow Burnie, already pouring another glass of milk, and Miles lifted the remainder of the pepper toward Michael. “Here’s looking at you, kid,” he saluted, taking another bite out of the pepper.

“You keep nibbling at it, just eat it!” Michael said, partially to help and partially to avoid having to think on the fact that the only reason Miles was subjecting himself to this hell was so Michael didn’t have to do it alone.

Just as Miles tossed the pepper stem in the trash, Burnie came back into the room, clutching his own glass of milk and looking like he was about to have an existential crisis. “Holy shit.” He leaned against the column by Michael, running a hand over his head.

The look on his face when Michael pointed to Miles and said, “He just ate the rest of it” was worth framing.

“Did you really??” Burnie demanded, hand flying toward his chest like he wanted to put it over his heart, or his mouth, like a terrified suburban mom in a horror movie.

Kara had the carton of milk, which automatically made her Michael’s favorite person in the room, especially when she came over to refill his and Miles’s glasses.

“We are going to run out of milk very quickly,” he muttered, but did absolutely nothing to stop her.

Burnie pointed accusingly at the little carton of peppers. “Can we throw these away, can they be put in a landfill? Is that okay?”

Michael snorted. “Just save them for the next barbecue.”

“I’m not putting those little fuckers anywhere near actual food.”

There must have been some kind of signal to end the video because a few seconds later both he and Miles were having their arms raised in the air, but Burnie and Kara respectively.

“A round of applause, for our test subjects.”

Test subjects?

Michael was just glad to have the lights out of his face honestly. And to finally be able to rub at his eyes.

Or at least he _would_ have, if Miles hadn’t snapped out a hand to grab his arm and keep him from touching his face. “Dude no, wash your hands first, you don’t want to go there, trust me.”

Oh shit. “Thanks”

Miles looked like he was going to say something, then twisted his head to get a better look at Michael’s arm. “That’s one gnarly-ass scar, what the fuck happened?”

“Knife fight,” Michael said immediately, as dry as he could manage, and earned a snort when Miles let go of his arm.

It was so fucking weird to be around people who would think that was a joke, but also kinda cool.

 

* * *

 

Forty minutes later, he was practically in the fetal position on the floor of the first bathroom he’d found.

He didn’t _want_ to puke, because that was a waste of all the good food and because everyone had made such a big fucking deal of him eating the damn pepper and Miles had done it because of him.

But he wasn’t really sure he had much of a choice, really.

It was really similar to the random times he got sick before, with the cramps and the heat, except this time he didn’t just feel feverish he felt like he’d swallowed molten lead that was burning him up from the inside.

He was lucky enough to have been able to slip away without anyone noticing, but giving up at this point felt like cheating.

To be fair, though, he was rapidly losing the ability to care.

A few minutes later, he learned the painful truth that ghost peppers were just as bad coming up as they were going down and while his stomach felt much better, he was battling the heat in his mouth all over again.

He didn’t have long before someone noticed he was gone, he knew that, but rinsing out his mouth in the bathroom sink wasn’t doing a lot to help him and there was no way he could go out and pretend to act normal when it felt like he’d just bitten into the damn pepper all over again.

Longingly, he thought back to the ice cold milk he’d had before. He was pretty sure there wasn’t any left, Miles had wandered off with it clutched to his chest like a precious stuffed animal. But maybe there was more in the fridge?

He pushed the door open and froze.

Ryan was leaning against the wall opposite the door, very casually, and in his hand was-

Michael was reaching out before he realized it and Ryan wordlessly pressed the slick glass full of ice into his hands before hooking a hand under his elbow and dragging him off. On some level, Michael knew he should probably be concerned by that, but they weren’t going toward the kitchen or back outside and he’d much rather shove a giant hunk of ice in his mouth than use it to ask questions.

They ended up in a small conference room. Ryan flicked the light switch on and pulled him inside, carefully shutting the door behind him.

Turning to him, Ryan frowned, “You okay?”

He assumed Ryan didn’t mean for him to respond verbally, with a mouthful of ice, so he just nodded, absently sitting on the edge of the conference table.

After looking at him a second longer, Ryan apparently decided to believe him, because he smiled a little and tugged the sleeve of his thin jacket down to cover the heel of his hand, stepping closer. “God, you’re a mess.”

Michael was just about to tell him to shut the fuck up, ice be damned, but went dead still when Ryan put a hand on one side of his face and-

He hadn’t realized his eyes had started watering again, let alone that maybe one or two tears had escaped, between the puking and the heat. Ryan was wiping them away with the sleeve of his jacket and Michael had no idea how the fuck to react to that, but given the circumstances, he could get away with closing his eyes.

Swallowing a mouthful of now-water, he asked, “Are you going to tell the others?”

Ryan pulled back to give him a bemused look. “No. You worried about them freaking out?”

Michael shrugged, tipped another piece of ice into his mouth.

“Look,” Ryan pulled a chair away from the table and straddled it, facing Michael, “they can be a little… not really over protective, but annoyingly concerned. Fortunately, they know that. But you’re also an adult and _young_ , which means you can do stupid shit and bounce back from it. They know that too. So they might be annoying, but they are trying to rein it in. Everyone should be able to do stuff like this if they want, and it’s their friends’ jobs to laugh at them while pouring Tums down their throat. I’m not gonna lie, the shift from worrying about you as much as they have to relaxing enough to give you a hard time isn’t easy for them, but they’re working on easing up on the whole ‘paranoid mom’ routine.”

‘Friends’. That didn’t really feel right. In the most technical sense, yeah, the guys could probably qualify as his friends. But ‘friends’ wasn’t strong enough a word and, at the same time, was too strong.

The guys had bent over backward for his sake for _months_ , did stuff no normal friends would do. But they still didn’t know the first thing about him anymore that _he_ knew the first thing about _them_. Which was… kinda surprising to realize.

“I didn’t ask anyone to worry about me,” Michael muttered under his breath, and Ryan rolled his eyes.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” Standing, Ryan spun the chair back into place. “They’ll appreciate seeing you haven’t spontaneously combusted, though. Ready to get back out there?”

With a shuddering breath that still hurt, but not nearly as bad as before, Michael nodded, got to his feet. He was pretty sure he could play at normal, now.

As they walked back toward the dull clamor of noises, Ryan asked, still staring straight ahead, “What do you think?”

Michael couldn’t pretend to be stupid enough not to know what he meant.

Rooster Teeth was… insane. But it was the good kind. And even though he knew jack shit about everyone here, he didn’t not fit.

He was pretty sure he could make it here, with enough time to get to know everything and everyone. Especially the guys. Paying back some of the money they’d spent on him was just the tip of the iceberg. He needed to do as much for them as they had for him and he _did_ need to be their friend, actively, to make that happen.

What he said out loud was, “Could use more explosions.” And Ryan laughed.

“Just wait until Dan comes to visit. You’ll get all the explosions you could want, then.”

There were a lot of people here. And maybe that’d be intimidating, but they already seemed to like him and with the guys at his back, Michael actually had a good feeling about something. It was a weird, fragile feeling, like it’d shatter if he looked at it took hard, but it was there.

“Looking forward to it.”


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 40 chapters, 140K words, and a full year later, Michael finally has his first day at the RT office! Happy Holidays, everyone, I hope you have an excellent time of it! Thank you all for how much love you've given this story over the past year (h o l y s h i t) and I look forward to providing you with more drama and h/c in the coming year!

Monday morning dawned dark as hell because Michael woke up at five in the fucking morning and couldn’t go back to sleep.

It wasn’t that he was nervous or excited or anything. He was just very… aware. That is was his first day at work.

He laid in bed trying to pretend to be relaxed enough to still be getting rest until his phone alarm went off at six. Who showered when was still not something he knew, so his plan was to shower plenty early and plenty _fast_.

It was always freezing fucking cold in the house before the sun was up, so he showered quickly, then pulled on warm clothes and socks and turned on his computer.

For a while, he just trolled through the forums on the Rooster Teeth website. There wasn’t anything really important to see, but he wanted to get a feel for the kind of fanbase he was going to be making content for.

Just when the sky was starting to lighten, there was a soft, barely there knock on the door.

Turning in his chair he called, “Come in?” equally quietly.

It was Geoff who poked his head in, frowning a little. “Have you been up all night?”

“Nah, I just woke up like a half hour ago and couldn’t go back to sleep.”

He wasn’t entirely sure whether Geoff would believe him or not, but apparently he seemed awake enough to pass because he just nodded. “I’m going to head up a little early, you want to come, since you’re already awake?”

Get up to the office before anyone else, while it was still quiet and he didn’t have to worry talking to anyone while he got more used to the office, which he hadn’t really gotten a chance to see at the cookout?

“Sure, sounds good.”

The house was so quiet when they walked through, he was sure the other guys weren’t up yet. Geoff jotted down a quick note and left it on the fridge, then they went out to the garage.

It was a quiet, but comfortable ride to the office. The traffic wasn’t terrible, but they hadn’t really hit the morning rush yet either.

Michael was perfectly happy to stare out the window at the sky as it lit up gradually, so he was a little surprised when they pulled into a parking lot that definitely _wasn’t_ the one for the office.

He was confused until he saw the sign for the donut shop and then he laughing. “Sugar craving?”

“Something like that,” Geoff admitted, pulling into the drive thru behind three other cars and stopping.

Geoff did kind of look like he was going to need at least coffee to survive the next hour, let alone the day. So that was fair.

Michael shifted in his seat to look at Geoff a little more head on. “So, like. What exactly are we going to do when we get to the office?”

After shifting the car into park, Geoff stretched his arms up a little before relaxing back into his seat. “ _We_ can’t do much until everyone else shows up, but you should get your setup how you like it so you’re ready to go when we need you to start editing videos. When everyone gets in, we’ll film AHWU at least, probably a gameplay video to give you an idea of what it’s like too.”

Okay, that sounded good. Doable.

A thought occurred to him then and he opened his mouth, then closed it, not quite sure how to ask-

“What is it?”

Well, this was probably the best place he _could_ ask. “Did you guys- I mean, I know when you posted that video on Twitter you said you were thinking about bringing me on, but was there ever an official, like…”

“Announcement?” Geoff asked, and apparently he didn’t think that sounded as arrogant as Michael did. He just grinned. “That’s what the AHWU’s for. Gonna be a hell of a day for comments.”

“Fucking fantastic.”

Geoff shoved his shoulder, but gently. “People haven’t stopped asking if we were really going to bring you on since we first posted that video. It’s a good thing.”

Michael shrugged in a way that probably wasn’t very convincing and sat back in his seat when they finally pulled up to the window.

All he had to do was get through the day. If all went to plan, this was going to be his normal pretty soon. Wouldn’t even show up as a blip on his radar. So all he had to do was put his head down and get through it.

 

* * *

 

He remembered the desk Geoff had said would be his, remembered that it was between Ray’s and Gavin’s. Remembered it had been dusty, with an old, worn out chair.

Now it was clean, there was a new computer on it, a couple of monitors, an Xbox, a PlayStation- everything he could need to get started.

So he spent most of the morning resisting the urge to run the fuck away.

“You keep bouncing that leg and I’m gonna fucking tear it off.”

“Bite me, Geoff.”

A long, loud sigh echoed behind him. “I’m never giving you sugar first thing in the morning again.”

Lifting one hand, Michael waved the bird over his shoulder, knowing he’d made his point when Geoff snorted, then went back to the computer screen in front of him.

He’d been getting pretty good at ignoring the urge to run, but it was tough. Needed something to focus on and there was only so much he could personalize the settings on this new computer. Sure, that needed to happen, he hadn’t realized how many things he’d tweaked in the program at the other computer to get things how he wanted them until he had to replicate it at the office.

That wasn’t going to last forever, though.

Fortunately, right as he was running out of little changes to make, the door to the office opened.

“Michael!”

“Hey, I’m here too, jackass,” Geoff griped as Michael abruptly found himself supporting most of Gavin’s weight when the Brit draped himself over his shoulders. That didn’t last long, though, because at Geoff’s words Gavin immediately got off.

The loud thud and ‘oof!’ from behind him made Gavin’s destination of choice pretty clear.

Spinning and twisting a little in his chair, Michael glanced over and, yup, Geoff and his desk chair were both sprawled on the floor, Gavin’s arms wrapped tightly around Geoff’s neck.

“Hope you got plenty of work done before we got here,” Ryan said, leaning against the doorframe while Jack and Ray headed for their desks. “Your productivity is going to go _way_ down now that Gavin’s here.”

“Hey!”

Ryan gave a little wave before turning and heading down the hall.

Frowning, Michael turned to Jack. “Where’s Ryan’s desk?” There were only five in the room, and they’d given one to him.

“Out in the warehouse.” Jack booted up his computer. “The machinima team snagged him when he started here, and he helps them out from time to time, so he’s in a more central location.”

“Oh,” that explained why the desk had been unoccupied for so long.

“He comes in to film stuff, though,” Ray said, leisurely spinning his chair in half-circles. “He’s got a portable setup, uses the couch.”

“Speaking of filming,” Geoff said, prying himself up off the ground like it was a chore and righting his chair, “we should get started on AHWU.”

Gavin groaned loudly, “Geoff, we just got here!”

“Well, lucky for you, you don’t have to be in the episode today. Michael’s going to be helping out with it.”

 _That_ got Michael’s attention. “What?”

Geoff dropped down into his chair, which rocked ominously backward before settling. “It’s a good first video, you literally just have to read off a sheet of paper.”

“He’s right,” Jack said, hooking an arm over the back of his chair and turning to look at Michael. “It’s a short video, it’ll get the announcement that you’re here out of the way, and it’ll kind of break the ice.”

Well… it wasn’t the _worst_ idea.

 

* * *

 

“What do you mean ‘look at the camera’?” Michael asked, looking directly _away_ from the camera. He’d watched AHWU before, so he knew full well what he was supposed to be doing. He just liked watching Jack’s soul slowly die behind his eyes. “Isn’t that a thing, to not look into the camera?”

Filing in front of what felt like the entire company was one thing. That was a little intimidating. But here? In the Achievement Hunter office with just Jack and Ray? That was fucking nothing. The lack of fear was honestly a little weird, but he wasn’t going to complain about it.

He was midway through rattling off a list of games coming out when the door opened and Burnie poked his head in.

“Hey- oh, you guys filming AHWU?”

“No,” Ray immediately answered, sarcasm thick in his voice.

“Cool,” Burnie came in, a bag of chips crinkling loudly, mostly probably deliberately, in his hands.

Michael grinned and, impulsively, asked, “Hey can I have a chip?” Burnie must have caught the look in his eye, because he was already grinning when he came over. Michael interrupted him when he started to hold out the bag, “Nah, feed it to me.”

Burnie made absolutely sure only his hand was in the shot, slowly reaching in from out of frame, then went above and beyond by gently pinching at Michael’s cheek and nearly making him choke on the chip.

This wasn’t nearly as big a deal as he’d built it up in his head to be. He was just standing in a tiny room, reading off a sheet of paper, and dicking around with some people he knew.

For the first time, he was really starting to get the feeling he could _do_ this.

AHWU wrapped up pretty quick and Michael was nominated to take the footage over to the behind the scenes crew, which gave him the chance to talk to them a little bit, especially Caleb, who he’d met at the cookout, but hadn’t really gotten the chance to talk to.

Honestly, the office felt more like a house than an _office_. The central area was a kitchen, after all, and the rooms were small, not exactly expansive.

But that was fine. It was really kind of perfect.

He was at the fridge trying to decide if he could grab another Red Bull without Jack giving him the ‘you should feel bad about your life choices’ look when he heard, from above him, “Hey, Michael!”

Turning at the familiar voice, he grinned. “Hey. Looks like you survived the weekend.”

“Oh God, don’t remind me,” Miles said, coming downstairs from the loft area. “I’m trying to repress that whole experience.”

There was the tiniest twinge of guilt that he’d gotten away without the longer term affects, but Michael pushed it aside for the time being, deciding, fuck it, and cracking open a Red Bull. “How’s that working out for you?”

“Not great.” Miles leaned against the island, folding his arms on the counter. “How’s your first day going?”

“So far so good.” After taking a measured sip from the can, Michael continued. “Soon we’re gonna have everything in place for the mutiny.”

Miles snorted, “Yeah, let me know how that goes.”

“You’re close enough to hear the screams.”

Miles laughed again and, yeah.

He could do this.

 

* * *

 

The rest of the day was kind of a blur. Geoff wanted to take them out to lunch and apparently that was a thing that had happened on _everyone’s_ first days, so Michael couldn’t really object to it on principle.

Then they gave him his first video to edit. Fortunately, it didn’t have to be out for a while, so he could take his time finding out what worked for him.

And then AHWU went up and the last few hours before he and Geoff headed back to the house were filled with checking the reaction.

Apparently, most people were really fucking thrilled that he was working at Achievement Hunter now.

That wasn’t ever going to stop being weird. It was fucking amazing, but so strange. How could these people decide they liked him already? They didn't know him. How could he possibly live up to whatever standard they had?

“Hey, you made a good first impression,” Geoff said when he mentioned it, vaguely, on the way back to the house. “That’s really fucking hard to do when it comes to the internet.”

“Yeah, I guess.” It felt a little too easy, but he was weirdly exhausted. The day hadn’t been _that_ long, not really. But he was still tired.

Fortunately, Geoff didn’t push it. Didn’t ask what Michael was doing when he headed straight for the guest room when they got back. In fact, he only said one thing, jarring Michael out of his thoughts of taking a power nap before the others got back.

“Hey, Michael,” when he turned to look, Geoff gave him a little wave, almost absentminded, as he headed toward the kitchen, “Good job today. You’re a great fit.”

Swallowing hard, Michael did his best to nod, mutter something that hopefully made sense, and absolutely didn’t flee into the guest room.


	41. Chapter 41

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure it's still Valentine's Day in some parts of the world, right? Happy Valentine's Day!
> 
> This is HORRENDOUSLY late, I know, it was another chapter where I held onto it way too long because I didn't think it was good enough and I still definitely don't think it's good enough, but hey, I'm booting it out anyway because we're never going to get to the REALLY fun stuff until I do. We've got, hmm, one, maybe two chapters until the fun stuff? That's my guess anyway, it might wind up being more than that, I'm kind bad at guess this shit, but hey, we're getting there! And I will try my very best not to overthink the next couple of chapters and cause another massive delay.
> 
> That said, enjoy the chapter!

Good first day or not, positive fan reaction or not, Michael couldn’t help but think things were moving just a _little_ too fast when Geoff and Jack sat him down _the next day_.

He’d have been nervous about it, if Geoff hadn’t said he’d done fine the day before. Instead he was just confused, staring across the table in the same conference room Ryan had dragged him to to pour ice down his throat at the cookout.

In fact, Geoff and Jack were the ones having a completely silent, telepathic fucking debate on the other side of the table.

When Jack opened his mouth and said, “We wanted to talk to you about turning that video you showed us into a series,” it _all_ made sense.

“Are you insane?” It was a fair question, as far as he was concerned.

“Michael,” the look on Jack’s face was a cross between gentle and annoyed, “you’ve got a great eye for content, this isn’t that farfetched.”

“I haven’t even _been_ in a real video yet-”

Geoff put his phone down on the table just this side of too hard. “Look at that.”

Leaning forward enough to see the screen, Michael blinked. “The video from the convention? What about it?”

“Look at the number.” Michael did and felt the physical strain of his eyes widening more than should have been possible. “After you showed up in AHWU yesterday and we revealed you were working here full time, it racked up another half a million views. _Overnight_. Do you have _any_ idea how rare that is, especially for a video that’s already been out for a month and a half?”

Michael opened his mouth. Closed it. Realized he had nothing coherent to say and sat back in his chair, deciding it was probably a smart move to just fucking wait there until the world started to make sense again.

Jack took this as his cue to keep talking because he was real fucking optimistic.

“The format of the video you showed us the other day seems pretty perfect for this,” he glanced at Geoff, who nodded, and Jesus Christ, they were _so_ fucking married. “If you want to give it a trial run, we can release the first few episodes on the site for sponsors only. That’ll give us a kind of focus group for the show and we can make a decision afterward. Sound alright?”

… that didn’t sound so bad. If it sucked, it sucked, and it’s not like they would have shown the world, anyway.

But that wasn’t the real issue. The real issue was _why the fuck did people like him_?

It wasn’t like he was being self-pitying, it was a genuine question. Sure, he could make a joke here and there, but he certainly didn’t rate _this_ level of investment from complete strangers. It was crazy.

And yet.

He started to run a hand over his eyes and only midway through the gesture, when his glasses fucked it up, did he realize he’d probably picked it up from Geoff and fuck his life, seriously.

They were still waiting there when he looked up again, and he was irrationally irritated with the universe for the fact that time didn’t stand fucking still to give him a chance to process this bullshit.

Letting out a long breath, he gave in just a little, but with the sick knowledge that there was an avalanche coming. “How long would the trial period be?”

Geoff grinned and Jack was obviously trying not to look _too_ pleased with himself, the shithead. “Four weeks? Releasing an episode once a week would be a good way to space it out.”

That wasn’t too bad. “When would this trial period start?”

“We’d like to take advantage of your momentum and get the first episode out end of next week.” Correctly interpreting whatever look was on Michael’s face, Geoff hurriedly backpedaled. “The one you already have is fine, we’ll just slap the intro and outro bumpers on it, maybe a title card for the series.”

It wasn’t a crazy big deal, the episodes would be short and he’d learned a lot over the last few weeks. Hell, he could probably get an episode done in a day, and that time would only go down the more experienced he got.

Still, he didn’t want it to be _that_ close.

But he was already compiling a list of games he might be able to make videos for, and that had probably been Geoff and Jack’s plan all along, the _fucks_.

He sighed, maybe a little deliberately dramatic to make Geoff grin. “Thursday? I’m not going to compete with the shit that comes out on Fridays.”

Jack smiled and Michael died a little inside. “Thursday sounds perfect."

 

* * *

  

As soon as he got back to the house later that afternoon, Michael made an excuse and locked himself in the guest room so he could quietly freak out without witnesses.

It wasn’t like it was _that_ big a deal, objectively speaking. Just a trial period.

But if it didn’t work out, wouldn’t that mean he wasn’t ready for this? And if even if it did, he didn’t want to say he was going to do something and not be able to guarantee it, long term.

Saying he’d make a weekly show was one thing, now, when he was new and interesting in his newness. But when people got tired of him, or if the whole job just didn’t work out, then what? What was he supposed to do, how would they even start to explain that to people who might have been watching?

He needed to… he needed to not be thinking about this.

He’d already _told them_ he’d do it. It wasn’t like he could back out. And thinking too hard about it was just going to keep him from being able to focus on what he could actually improve.

What he needed was something else to think about.

Slipping out of the guest room, he didn’t have to go too far to find Ray.

“Hey, you think you can help me get to fifteen thousand gamerscore?”

“Are you trying to seduce me?”

 

* * *

 

He was still kind of freaked out about the idea of doing his own show, but the great thing about the _rest_ of the job was people would tell him what shit to film.

Wednesday, he got to spend recording footage for a collectible guide, so, essentially, just making his way through the game and inflating his gamerscore. His mind kept flashing back to the piece of paper he’d signed, the number that was going to be on his paychecks, and making feel like he should do more.

But nope, this was what he’d been told to do. Beat a video game, film himself getting all the collectibles.

Fucking insanity.

“Dude, I know exactly what you mean,” Miles said when Michael brought it up at lunch, gesturing with his red cup. “I get to work on my favorite web series based on my favorite videos games. _Every_ day at work is a trip.”

“I keep expecting to wake up back in Jersey,” Michael admitted, unwrapping his sub. Miles had suggested Jersey Mike’s as a good place to go for lunch. Michael’d half believed he’d been lying about there being one in Austin and was just making the obvious pun, but there they were.

Miles shrugged. “You sorta get used to it, but then sometimes you’ll be showering or something and remember what you do for a living and just go ‘what the fuck’. Hey, you gonna eat those?”

“If you touch my chips I will fucking stab you in your neckbeard.”

“ _Hey,_ don’t hate on my awesome beard just because you can’t grow one.”

“The _fuck_ did you just say to me?”

 

* * *

 

Michael loved his job.

Granted, he’d only had it for four days, but it was still better than anything he ever dreamed he’d be doing.

Honestly, if the guys had offered, he’d have worked in an industrial factory and it’d still be better than the situation he was in before, but _this_?

It wasn’t even just the videos games, though that was a massive mark in the ‘pro’ column. It wasn’t being with the guys either, though that was another giant fucking check mark. Nope, the cherry on top was he actually found he _enjoyed_ making videos.

That was the biggest surprise. Now he knew a little bit, he was starting to like it more and more. It was time-consuming, but straightforward, detailed work.

On Thursday, he had to put together the video for the collectible guide. He’d been careful while playing through the game to make reference points, landmarks so people could find each item more easily. Sometimes he’d run back and forth between them half a dozen times, just to get a shot that looked decent.

It paid off in the editing. Everything was so clear. It was the kind of guide he’d want to watch, if he needed help, which was part of what was so fucking weird about it. _He’d_ made it. Two months ago, he’d had nothing, and now he was here, with people he liked, and a job, and equipment to make shit like this.

Whenever he thought about it too much, it felt unreal.

That in mind, he set the video to exporting and glanced around the room. Geoff and Jack were in some kind of meeting, Ryan was out working in the warehouse and Ray… actually, he had no idea where Ray was. But Gavin was there, so he wasn’t going to wait around.

“Hey,” reaching out, he poked Gav in the arm- not hard, but the Brit jumped anyway. Fair enough, he’d been leaning so close to the screen, intent on the editing he was doing, that his nose had practically been touching it. “Sorry. You wanna record a commentary?”

Gavin blinked slowly, gradually remerging from wherever weird genius headspace he went when he was editing. “What for?”

“Collectible guide.” Pointing to the half-loaded render bar on the screen, Michael shrugged. “Pretty straightforward, but the last video we did together did really well, so it might be fun.”

“Oh. Alright, yeah.”

It took a bit to get the microphones out and set up, but pretty soon they were both sitting in front of Michael’s desk, headphones on.

Part of Michael wished he’d sat in on commentary on someone’s else’s video before trying it with one of his, but too fucking late for that now. “You good?”

Gavin shifted in his seat, readjusting the arm of his mic. “Top.” At Michael’s snort, he looked over. “What?”

“You’re _so_ British.”

“Of course I bloody am, I’m _from_ _England_.”

“Yeah, there’s no forgetting that, buddy.” Michael queued up the exported video, glanced over to make sure Gavin was ready to go, then hit play, immediately launching into the _most_ obnoxious accent that he could. “’Ello, chaps, it’s Michael an’ Gav from Achievement ‘unter dot com.”

Gavin wasn’t looking at him, was looking at the screen, but was smiling. “Hello, everyone,” he said, ignoring Michael’s prodding ‘how was that’s about his accent. “What are we doing, Michael?”

“We are playing _Alan Wake’s American Nightmare_ , uh, fucking ‘One Day I’ll Use A Stapler’ or _something_ , whatever the name of it was, I don’t know, it was in the title there- so, that’s the collectibles achievement in this game, so you gotta get all fifty-three manuscripts. Four of them you get automatically, I do not include them in this video because you get them automatically. So-”

“What if you miss them?”

Fucking Christ. “You can’t _miss them_ , because you _get them automatically_ from _playing the game_.”

“Ooooohkay.”

“Now, most of the levels are easy because once you get there it’s like a big, open area you’re free to run around and collect them in pretty much any order…”

It was actually fairly easy to switch on a sort of autopilot when talking about the game. He’d already sort of planned out what he wanted to say in the video while making it, but it was going way smoother than he’d thought it would.

Well, sort of.

Gav was being kinda quiet. Which wasn’t a bad thing, not when Michael was in the middle of explaining shit, but it was odd for him. Then again, a normal person’s baseline would look withdrawn if Gavin was doing it, so maybe Michael was just overthinking things.

When Gavin said, “Let me ask you a question,” the thought left his mind entirely. “Why are these pieces of paper glowing?”

“… well, it’s cause it’s easier to find, Gav.” He didn’t _say_ ‘obviously’, but he was thinking it.

Gavin scoffed a little, “I would’ve found them anyway.”

Oh _this_ was gonna be good. “You would’ve found them anyway, even if they weren’t glowing?”

“Yeah, that’s more of a challenge.”

“How would you find them?”

“Just be looking at rocks and- I’ll be like ‘look at this, uh, giant rock… oh, paper on it!’”

It was _such_ a Gavin thing to say that Michael couldn’t _not_ laugh at it. “Oh yeah, is that what you’re doing, you’re a fucking rock investigator?”

“That’s it, yeah.”

Once they got going, they took _off_.

“What’s written on these pieces of paper?”

“Uh, a story.”

“Have you read it?”

“I didn’t read it-”

“Why?”

“You can read it-”

“Why didn’t you read it??”

“Because I was busy fuckin collecting shit and making a video I didn’t give a shit about what it said! All- the achievement is for _getting_ them Gav, not for _reading_ them!”

“ _Someone-_ ”

“-I’m not a _scholar-_ ”

“-put the effort in to write an interesting story on pieces of glowing paper!”

In fifteen minutes, they filmed three videos’ worth of commentary and it felt like thirty seconds.

“You sound exasperated- you’ve been on a journey, Michael.”

“This is like- I’m sad it’s over! This is our first guides we’ve done together.”

“Uh, get over it, y’know-”

“ _Wow_!”

“Wh-”

“It _meant_ something to me!”

“Yeah I can tell, by the way you’re looking at me but-“

“Look at that, it was right under the motel sign, that’s how you know where it is- that was the motel that we went to _the first time we were together_!” At first we was a little worried he’d pushed the joke a bit far there, but then Gavin laughed and the moment passed.

It went crazy fast, before he knew it, Michael was hitting the button to stop the recording and he felt… good. Like his head was a little clearer, having done that, having enjoyed it, he already knew the videos would turn out well. He just had to add the audio in and render it out.

He grinned at Gavin, “That’s good, I think.”

Gavin looked a little more centered than he’d been when they started too, a smile hovering around his lips now. “Sounds good.”

He _was_ almost sad the first one was over, but he was going to get to do dozens, if not hundreds, more of these.

There was always going to be more to look forward to.


	42. Chapter 42

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, DEEPLY sorry for taking so long to update. But hey, good news! After the next chapter (maaaybe two) updates should be slightly more regular because I'll be back in an area of the story of planned out a bit more thoroughly. So not to worry, you won't be trapped in 'once every other month' update hell anymore*!
> 
> That said, this chapter was one I was wavering on a lot when it came to a lot of elements and it feels good to just kick it out the door not to worry over. Here's hoping I won't be kicking myself for that later, lol
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> *statement not legally binding

When he walked out into the kitchen the next morning, all five of the guys were there. That was weird, since there were so many of them all that they tended to head up to the office in groups, but it didn’t look like anything was wrong, so he didn’t worry too much about it. It was actually kind of cool, he wasn’t sure the six of them had ever had breakfast together.

Geoff had a griddle in front of him and a mixing bowl the size of a basketball next to it. He looked up when Michael shuffled in with a grin just edging into smug, “Hey, morning!”

Michael raised an eyebrow before replying, “Morning,” and walking to the fridge. He heard a snicker and the obvious sound of a shin being kicked and repressed a smirk as he pulled out a Red Bull.

Sidling up to Geoff, he looked at the griddle and asked, “Making pancakes?”

“… yup, next batch should be coming up soon,” Geoff replied, reading for a ladle.

Deliberately not looking up, Michael nodded, “Awesome” and turned to sit at the bar with Ray and Gav, who was staring down at his coffee cup and trying not to smile.

Geoff grumble and went back to his cooking, but Ray caught Michael’s eye, gave him a questioning look, and held a finger under his nose. Michael gave him a sly smile and Ray grinned back before returning to his pancakes.

Michael was well aware of the fact that, between seeing the man last night and breakfast, Geoff had shaved off his moustache. He was just way too entertained by fucking with what was clearly supposed to be a big reveal to not pretend to be oblivious.

A plate of pancakes was passed over Gavin’s head and Michael took it, with muttered thanks. Gavin actually didn’t look up, even when Michael reached for the syrup, which was a little weird, actually.

On closer inspection, he didn’t looking like he was half asleep still. He was alternately picking at his pancakes and messing with something on his phone, perfectly awake.

It was the same dilemma Michael’d encountered before. Gavin was acting normal, but an average person’s normal. Gavin had a whole other scale and, by that, he was definitely acting subdued. So was there something wrong with him, like something had been wrong with Ray?

Gavin definitely didn’t have the same problem as Ray, though. He thrived on being around people he liked. So if something was up, it definitely wasn’t him feeling confined.

So what was it?

 

* * *

  

The Friday cookout felt kinda like a celebration, despite the fact that no one seemed to be doing anything out of the ordinary.

Maybe it was just Michael, though. After all, it was the end of his first week as a Rooster Teeth employee.

Surreal didn’t even begin to cover it.

But it was nice. Cool enough outside that he needed a jacket when the sun started to set, but not cold enough that it was uncomfortable. He was sitting with Miles and Kerry again, and discussing a fucking _travesty_.

“What the fuck do you _mean_ you’ve never played a Zelda game?!”

Miles held up his hands, “I was a Sonic kid-!”

“That’s not a fucking excuse!”

“I hate to interrupt,” Burnie’s voice startled Michael into almost spilling his beer. When the fuck had he come over, “But can I borrow Michael for a sec?”

“Please,” Miles muttered, burying his face in his hands.

“Oh you’re not getting off that fucking easy,” Michael insisted, even as he stood. “Kerry?”

“I got it.” Kerry slung an arm over Miles’s shoulders, leaned in, and asked very seriously, “What the fuck, bro?”

Michael wanted to grin at the sound of Miles’s groan as he walked away, but couldn’t quite manage it. He was sure he hadn’t done anything wrong, but Burnie was leading him away from the cookout, into the building, clearly looking for a way to talk with some degree of privacy.

Of course, Burnie was big on privacy in general, but it was still a little nerve-wracking to be called out by- was Burnie his boss? Geoff was his main boss, but was Burnie above him or just on the same level somehow?

Either way, it wasn’t exactly relaxing to be called out by him.

But Burnie was Burnie, as non-threatening as ever, so that made it significantly better. Even though they went deeper into the building, into what was apparently his office, which. Okay, that was a little terrifying.

Still, all Burnie did was head over to a laptop on the corner of the desk and wave Michael over. “Here, you’ve gotta see this.”

At first, Michael didn’t understand was he was looking at. It was the video they’d made about the ghost chili, but it was on the Rooster Teeth website. Which, fair enough, it was a sponsor video, so that made sense?

Burnie must’ve seen his confusion, because he scrolled down a bit so Michael could see the number of comments and ratings on the video.

It was… a large number.

“Holy shit,” he breathed, eyes bugging slightly. “Didn’t this just go up a little bit ago?”

“Yeah,” Burnie scratched at the back of his head. “Your track record is getting kinda ridiculous, man.”

“Hey, I wasn’t the only one in that video.”

“No, but you’re a common denominator.” Burnie crossed his arms and looked at Michael thoughtfully for a second. “How do more food challenge videos sound?”

“What?”

Nodding to the computer, Burnie continued. “There’s a lot of suggestions in the comments, people want to see it.”

So now he was going to get paid for _eating food_ , what kind of pipe dream world was this. “Fuck, I’m down for it, if you think it’s a good idea.”

“Awesome,” Burnie clapped him on the shoulder and didn’t look offended when he subtly squirmed away. “If you want to take a look through the comments over the weekend and pick out a couple of challenges to try, we can plan out when we want to shoot them.”

“Yeah, sounds good.”

This place was so weird. So outside of what he expected from the world, from people. In some ways that was good, but in others, well.

It didn’t feel real. Like, there was no fucking doubt he was enjoying himself at Rooster Teeth, with the guys. But at the same time… it was like he couldn’t feel happiness like he should’ve. Because it didn’t feel like all this could be _possible_ , but there he was, walking through the office with Burnie, back to the cookout.

The longer things went without going bad, the more worried he got. It just didn’t feel _possible_.

So when he saw Jack and Gavin having a near-silent conversation down a dark hall, it was almost a relief.

Gav looked agitated and Jack looked tired and worried. Michael couldn’t make out the words they were saying, but it was pretty clear Gavin was annoyed about something and Jack was trying to calm him down.

At least it didn’t look like they were fighting. When Jack touched Gavin’s face, Gavin leaned into it, and when they kissed, the lightbulb clicked on over Michael’s head.

He’d been in their space for a month and a half now. They’d been awesome about it, but they hadn’t shown a lot of affection in front of him and, since he’d spent nearly all his time in their house, and they didn’t seem big on PDA in public either, they just might’ve not been able to relax the whole time he’d been around.

That made sense. It sucked, because he’d tried to make it so they could have at least _some_ privacy, but it made sense. Hell, even when they’d gone out of town, they’d apparently spent so much time worried about him, he doubted they’d have been able to even think about having a good time in the hotel.

Damn. He needed to do _something_ , didn’t he?

Fortunately, it didn’t take him long to figure out _what_.

“Seriously,” he heard Kerry saying as he got closer, “I’ve got Ocarina of Time at my place, you can borrow it-”

“We should do that,” Michael interjected, leaning toward them with one hand on the table. “Just fucking go play it, Miles won’t do it on his own.”

“Hey-”

Kerry grinned. “I’m good for it.”

Sliding a look his way and raising an eyebrow was all it took to get Miles to sigh in defeat. “ _Fine_.”

Grinning, Michael straightened. “Give me a sec to tell the guys.”

By ‘guys’, he of course meant ‘Ryan’. Not that he thought the others would give him trouble or anything, but they’d ask _way_ more questions.

True, to form, Ryan just nodded. “Cool, have fun. Text one of us if you need a ride home.” And that was that.

Ryan was by far the easiest to talk to about this sort of thing. Michael had a sneaking feeling that Geoff or Jack would’ve wanted to ask a lot of questions.

Then again, maybe not, not if they really did need alone time that much, as a group.

Well, hopefully they could have that. Even if Kerry wasn’t planning on having them stay over, it’d be nothing for him to stay out over the weekend anyway. He hadn’t had a place to stay for a decade, a night or two wouldn’t bother him worth a damn.

“Hey,” Kerry met him at the door into the office, “you good to go?”

“Yeah, let’s go fix Miles.”

 

* * *

 

Michael had been at Rooster Teeth for a full week now, but in spite of that, playing Zelda with Miles and Kerry made him feel like he was having an out-of-body experience.

Maybe it was the game, maybe it was just the complete normality of sitting on a couch with a couple of friends and playing something together, maybe it was just the knowledge that he was doing something good for the _guys_ for a change, but none of it really felt real.

It was _fun_. Re-experiencing the game, watching Miles, he-who-was-not-raised-on-Zelda-puzzles, stumble at the first few hurdles, looking like a badass when he could easily do things Miles couldn’t. But it felt like he was watching it on TV, not living it.

Fortunately, it didn’t last crazy long. It easily could’ve gone all night, but it turned out Kerry had something to do in the morning and was all too eager to boot them out right after they snuck through the castle and met Zelda.

Conveniently enough, Kerry and Miles lived in the same building. There was an apartment complex literally just down the street from the office, it was visible through the windows on that side of the building. It’d been easy to walk there and Michael wasn’t at all surprised employees who didn’t have houses already lived there.

Unfortunately, that sort of put him on the spot when he turned to go and Miles asked where he was headed. It was probably well known that, the guys’ house? Wasn’t in walking distance.

“I was just going to go get some work done on a video Geoff wants out next week,” was the best excuse he could come up with on the spot.

It really was a terrible excuse, if Miles’s raised eyebrow was anything to go by. “It’s after midnight. Do you need a ride to the guys’ place?”

“No! Fuck no, I just…” this was one of the situations where telling the truth was the only way to get out of it because anything else just sounded too suspicious. “It’s just this is the first time in like two fucking months the guys have had the house to themselves, so…”

“Ahhh...” Miles’s body language relaxed significantly. “Sexiling yourself for the greater good? How noble!” His tone was sing-song, but not mocking, so Michael decided to let it slide.

“It’s self fucking preservation, dude.”

“Oh, believe me, I don’t doubt that.” Miles grinned, then glanced out over the railing, toward the office building. “Planning on sleeping on the couch in the office?”

“According to Ryan, it’s a nice fucking couch.”

“I’ll bet, but Rooster Teeth is full of fucking workaholics and an alarm system, it’ll be a pain in the ass to move around in there at night, let alone sleep. If you want it, I’ve got a couch you’re welcome to. Plus, I doubt the Achievement Hunter office has pillows, blankets, or breakfast hot pockets.”

Michael found himself relaxing a little, even though he couldn’t say for sure when he’d gotten tense. “Breakfast hot pockets?”

“Food of the fucking gods, Michael.”

Shaking his head, Michael let a grinning Miles sling an arm around his shoulders and pull him along. “Alright, I’m sold.”

 

* * *

 

Grimacing, Michael rolled his shoulders without looking away from the computer screen in front of him.

It was almost funny how much his body complained about a couple nights spent on a couch when he’d slept worse places with much less discomfort in the past. Still, he was glad he’d stayed with Miles. The abundance of hot pockets had been awesome, but also they’d spent most of the day watching old anime, then playing Zelda with Kerry. It’d been fun.

He’d left for the office that morning, though. Didn’t want to overstay his welcome, and hanging out at the office was far from a bad option.

Plus, Rooster Teeth? Was, yes, apparently full of fucking workaholics.

He’d been able to get into the building, no problem at all, and was currently sitting at his desk and syncing up video and audio for the Rage Quit he’d just filmed. Miles had insisted he could stay longer if he wanted, but Michael knew he’d feel way fucking better if he could just get some of these videos done well in advance.

Though, Miles had still stolen his phone, programmed in his number, and texted himself. Ostensibly so it’d be easier for Michael to ‘sexile himself’ in the future, but Michael suspected ulterior motives at play.

Caught up in staring at his phone suspiciously out of the corner of his eye, he almost didn’t notice when Ryan walked in.

“Oh hey,” his said, offhanded as he looked over at Gavin’s desk and gave it a disappointed look.

“Hey,” Michael spun a little to face him. “What’s up?”

“Eh, Gavin’s missing a flash drive, I told him I’d look for it since I was coming up here anyway, but,” he gestured to the mess of Gavin’s desk and carefully opened one drawer like he expected to get bitten.

Michael scoffed, “Yeah, good luck with that.”

“Honestly, it’s probably in one of his pockets somewhere,” Ryan said with a shrug. “But I was coming up anyway.”

“Deadline coming up?”

“Not really, but it’ll just be easier to get some stuff done before tomorrow.” Ryan leaned idly against the wall and gestured to Michael’s setup. “What about you?”

“Hey, it was your boyfriends that decided I should make a series almost exclusively of screaming, I’m not doing that during actual work hours.”

Ryan smirked a little. “Fair enough. I’m gonna be here for a few hours, so we can head back together after, if you’re going to be around that long.”

On the one hand, he’d hoped to give them all a weekend together. On the other, he really wanted to change clothes and he doubted they’d have anything planned for the rest of the day. Plus, it’d be really fucking incriminating to be there when Ryan left, then again first thing in the morning.

“Sure, sounds good.”

“Cool, I’ll be out in the warehouse.”

Michael wasn’t expecting it, so he nearly flinched when Ryan reached out and just barely cupped the back of his head before turning to leave the room.

It’d been an unconscious gesture, Ryan had looked like he hadn’t even noticed, and really, Ryan had been the one to go out of his way to touch him more than anybody short of maybe Gavin, so he should’ve expected it.

It was just a little weird was all. Felt almost like his hair was standing on end. Which was fucking stupid because it was such a small thing, and he’d seen Ryan do it before, with Ray, when leaving a conversation.

A little annoyed with himself, he scrubbed a hand through the hair at the back of his head before turning back to his monitor.

No reason to psyche himself out.


	43. Chapter 43

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heeeeey, I didn't make you wait a metric year for an update this time! Hallelujah.
> 
> It certainly has nothing to do with the fact that I have to wake up early tomorrow to go get my internal organs ultrasounded and I do so love your happy messages.
> 
> Of course not.
> 
> Enjoy~

Gavin was even _more_ irritable on Monday, which. _Really?!_

Again, it wasn’t an overt thing. Gavin seemed just as energetic and annoying as ever, mostly. Which made it even more frustrating that something was just ever so slightly _off_.

He was acting fine. Normal, even. But Michael knew there was _something_ up.

The fact that he couldn’t put his finger on it was driving him a little up the wall.

A nudge to his shoulder made him jump a little, but, when he turned, Ray didn’t looked surprised or offended, so that was good. Fucking sucked that the guys expected that, but good it didn’t upset them.

Ray opened his mouth to say something, then the door to the office banged open.

“Hey!” Miles said cheerfully, “Heard you wanted my help with something?”

Michael hesitated, looking over at Ray. Ray snapped his mouth shut, shook his head, and clapped Michael on the shoulder before leaning back in his chair.

Well. Okay then.

Michael took off his headphones and stood up, “Glad you finally decided to show up to work, asshole.”

“Give me a break, I had to run to the store. Some jerk ate all my hot pockets.”

Giving Miles a weird look as he shut the door behind them, Michael asked. “So you were late to work because you ran to the store and ran home to put your hot pockets in the freezer before coming back? Instead of just fucking waiting until after?”

“Well, when you put it like _that-_ ”

“Oh my god, just shut the fuck up.”

Miles’s grin didn’t falter a bit as he plopped himself down at the table in the kitchen. “So? What’s up?”

This was actually kinda the tricky part because Michael didn’t realize until this very second that he might not be putting just his head on the chopping block here.

“So apparently that chili pepper video got a fuckton of views and Burnie was thinking food challenges-”

Miles cringed a little, excellent.

“-dude, you don’t have to do it, just help me film the fucking thing, I already picked an easy one out.”

“I mean, if you need someone else in the video-” Miles started to say, even though he was already slumping with relief.

“Nah, fuck that, if I kill you, Gus’ll fucking kill me for ruining one of the machinima monkeys.”

A distant ‘damn right’ drifted down from the loft.

Miles laughed. “Alright, dude. What do you need me to do?”

Setting up the video was simple. Burnie had brought in a bottle of cinnamon, when Michael had texted him what he wanted to do, and also a Gatorade, because the man apparently took over the health and feeding of anyone who joined his company and/or stood still long enough.

Miles was the one who got a camera (look, Michael was perfectly capable of filming a video by his goddamn self, but he didn’t even know who to _ask_ for a camera in the clusterfuck of the office, enlisting Miles and making him do it was just sense) and set it up.

In fact, all went fine through the intro, him ditching the tablespoon to grab a mixing spoon, and loading it up.

Right up until the second he put it in his mouth.

Immediately, he knew it was worse than the pepper. The second the cinnamon filled the inside of his mouth, it felt like every single cell touching it dried up and died.

His eyes watered immediately, but he tried, for a few second, to handle it. Pressed his mouth against the side of his arm and tried to swallow.

Then he coughed.

Which somehow made it even _worse_.

There was a cloud of cinnamon dust around his face, coating his arm. Miles had fucking stolen his Gatorade. There was a small trashcan by is chair, which he’d assumed had been put there as a joke because why the _fuck_ would cinnamon be so _bad_ , but he was glad the trash can was there, so he could lean over and retch into it.

Someone was patting his back.

“You okay, buddy?”

Michael was going to fucking strangle Miles.

It was gonna making a good fucking video, but Michael was _pretty_ sure he was dying.

“Dude,” Ray’s voice came from the entry hall, followed by the squeaks of Gavin’s ‘trying to laugh sneakily, but not _that_ hard’ noises. Because of course they’d walk in on him covered in cinnamon, with tears streaming down his face.

The camera stopped rolling. Michael lunged for Miles and ripped the Gatorade out of his hand.

“I’m pretty sure they call that an ‘indirect kiss’.”

Flipping off the Miles-shaped blur, Michael started chugging.

 

* * *

 

Michael’s goodwill from the previous week rapidly faded throughout the present.

It wasn’t that he didn’t still love his job and enjoy the people he worked with.

Just that the first Rage Quit video was going to hit the site on Thursday and Gavin was driving him insane.

He was rapidly working himself into a nervous wreck, but he couldn’t help it. Him making an idiot of himself on video was one thing, but this show was all _him_ , his voice, his jokes, his editing. No one else to play off, no humor to dilute his own, make it less annoying.

Kept him running through the video over and over, practically climbing the walls with the force of his nerves alone.

And then there was Gavin.

Who was, of course, acting completely fucking normal. Draping himself all over his boyfriends, screaming ‘what is Game Night’ and the top of his lungs whenever Geoff and Caleb sat down to record an episode, giving Michael heart attacks left and right.

If the whole Rage Quit thing didn’t drive him to a mental break first, Gavin was probably next in line.

 

* * *

 

Jack eventually made him fork over a final version of the video and, when it came out Thursday, it was almost anticlimactic.

Not because there was a lack of reaction- there was a hell of a reaction. People seemed to love it, saying they wanted more every time Michael refreshed the page.

Geoff and Jack were smug sons of bitches, leaning over his shoulder and nudging him and going ‘see? We told you!’

And it was good people liked the video. It was, he was glad for it.

But he still didn’t really… _feel_ anything about it?

They liked the video, good, great, wonderful. They liked _him_ , wanted to see him in more things. But it didn’t feel like he thought it would, didn’t feel like all those things were true.

It was like a rushing sound in his ears. Nothing distinct, nothing important. He didn’t feel good or bad or anything.

But, in the long run, that was probably better. He knew he could do this, knew he could make these videos. Maybe not stressing or feeling too strongly about them would help?

So he rolled his eyes at Geoff and Jack and kept his head down.

Eventually, this would be his normal. Better to not worry them when he was still getting used to it.

 

* * *

 

With the first Rage Quit video up, the biggest thing pushing for his attention was Gavin.

The fucker.

By Friday, Michael pretty much figured that Gavin had to be pissed at him, or something. The biggest difference he’d been able to put a finger on was the Gavin wasn’t paying as much attention to him, which made him sound like a whiny little bitch when he thought of it in those terms, but it was _true_.

Gavin wasn’t going out of his way to pester him, or butting into his business, or doing that thing where he draped himself over anyone who stood still long enough. And Gavin did that to all the people he gave half a shit about, so.

Not that he should really be expecting anything from Gavin at all. Hell, he’d intruded on his life and home enough.

He just never thought the first person to get sick of him would be _Gav_.

But then, it’d been Gav who’d been off, who’d been talking with Jack in the hall a week ago. Maybe making himself scarce for the weekend hadn’t helped, maybe it’d just made Gavin realize how much better it was when it was just him and his boyfriends at home.

It sucked. It _really_ sucked. But maybe once he was out of their hair, it’d be better? Twenty-four hours a day around him, of course _someone_ was going to get sick of him eventually. But once he got his own place, maybe they’d strike a good balance and the guys wouldn’t mind him so much anymore?

He’d move out in a second if he could, but he’d only just gotten his first paycheck. Burnie had abducted him during lunch to take him to the bank to set up an account and deposit it and everything.

It was way more money than he’d ever had in his life, but he still had Jack to pay back, some sort of rent situation to work out with the guys, because he wasn’t going to be a freeloader a second longer than he had to.

Didn’t apartments require, like, deposits and shit? He wasn’t going to have enough for that, not with just one check.

But if Gavin was already sick of him, he needed to get out as soon as he could. Maybe Miles or Kerry or someone would let him crash on their couch for a little while?

He was about ready to pull his hair out over it by the time the cookout rolled around. Was so caught up in his thoughts he could barely hold a conversation with Lindsay.

When he heard something behind him, he turned, and Geoff was standing there with a… _weird_ expression on his face. “What’s up, Geoff?”

“You seen Gav anywhere?”

Well _that_ couldn’t be good. “Not for a few hours, why?”

“Eh, he’s just been in a mood lately, tends to get _really_ bevved up when that happens. Want to make sure he’s not passed out in a bush somewhere.” But Geoff ran a hand through his hair, looked around the area, and frowned.

Not great.

With an apologetic nod to Lindsay, Michael knocked back the rest of his beer, tossed the bottle in a nearby can, and stood. “I’ll help you look.”

The fact that Geoff didn’t protest really said a whole fucking lot about the sort of situation he anticipated Gavin getting himself into.

It didn’t turn out to be that bad of course. Not that Michael found him right away, he checked where he was sure Geoff already had, but places he’d go if he needed a minute. The Achievement Hunter office, the parking lot.

But up the stairs to the loft, into some office-

And there he was, on the floor, back to the desk, legs pulled up to his chest, chin on the arms folded across his knees, beer bottle dangling from one hand, glaring at the opposite wall.

He was such a picture of self-pity that Michael almost expected soulful violin music to start playing from the computer speakers. Or emo rock, whichever.

When that didn’t happen, he sighed and walked a little further into the room, crouching down next to Gavin. “Hey, you really oughta tell one of your boyfriends when you’re going to wander off for a pity party.”

“Sod off, Michael,” he spat out and _wow_ , that was a lot of venom for _Gavin_ of all people.

What was it Ray had said? _‘_ _I’ve been dating Gavin for about five months now and I have never seen him actually angry.’_

Michael was pretty sure just hanging around hadn’t been enough to cause that sort of response, but what _else_ could it be? He was pretty sure he hadn’t done anything that possibly could’ve hurt Gavin, let alone _this_ much.

Whatever, he could work out what he’d done (and how to make up for it) later, but for now, he should probably grab Geoff.

He stood, started to turn, then was stopped by a sharp tug on the leg of his jeans.

“Wait,” Gavin was talking into his knees now, despite his death grip on Michael’s pants. “’M sorry. Didn’t mean it.”

Well, shit. He really ought to go get Geoff, but he’d feel like even more of an asshole than usual if he left Gavin like this.

Sighing, he sat down, putting his back to the other side of the corner Gavin had his back to. After a few moments of silence, he also reached over, plucked the half-full beer bottle out of Gavin’s hand, and downed it. Gavin made a grumpy noise, but allowed it. They both knew he probably didn’t need any more.

“So,” Michael started, lobbing the bottle into the nearby trash can. “Why are you so pissy lately?” Might as well ask when Gavin wasn’t making an attempt to hide it.

“’M not,” Gavin said, still not lifting his head.

“I’m not fucking _blind_ , Gav.”

There was silence for a long time, and Michael was actually half convinced Gavin had fallen asleep (or passed out) before there was a mumbled. “Nothin’, I’m just being dumb.”

… _what_?

Gavin didn’t get down on his intellect very much, considering he could be a fucking genius when the mood struck him. So what was this about?

Turning to face Gavin a little more, Michael asked, “What the fuck are you talking about?” Gavin didn’t respond so, rolling his eyes, Michael moved closer and started poking him, _hard_ , in the shoulder. Gavin didn’t have patience at the best of times, he’d cave before Michael got tired.

Sure enough, it only took about a dozen pokes before Gavin was making a frustrated, strangled sound and finally lifting his head to slap Michael’s hands away. “You’re never _around_!”

And really, what the actual fuck? “We go home to the same fucking house every fucking _day_.”

“I know!” Gavin wailed, like this was, somehow, part of the problem. “But at work, it’s like we’re not _there_ , you’re always off with Miles, or Kerry- and I’m not stupid, it’s not bad you’ve got people you want to hang out with, it’s top, they’re great blokes, but I at least thought I was one of them.” The last bit he mumbled under his breath and, okay.

Gavin was upset because… he didn’t think Michael wanted to be around him? They lived in each other’s damn _pockets_ , Michael’d thought any of the guys would’ve killed for some breathing room.

But now that he was thinking about it, he hadn’t really hung out with the guys at the office for anything other than actively filming videos. He _was_ always off talking to the other Rooster Teeth employees. Hell, even when they went home at night, he’d been trying to give them their privacy.

It could very, very easily have been seen as him avoiding them, or replacing them. Even at the cookouts, he hadn’t wanted to deal with them hovering and being worried over him, so he actually _had_ been actively avoiding them.

And the week before, when he went home with Miles and only told Ryan, who he _knew_ wouldn’t react strongly about it, that probably hadn’t helped.

Well, shit. Even when he’d tried to do something _good_ for them, he managed to fuck it up.

Sighing, Michael sat back a little. “Know something, Gav?”

Gavin looked petulant, like he wasn’t going to play along. Which, hey, his level of drunk was going to make this _way_ easier. Michael wasn’t an expert by any means, but maybe Gavin wouldn’t remember this in the morning and he could just fix the issue by paying more attention to him. That would be nice.

“What?”

But he needed to say something _now_. Gav deserved that much.

He swallowed. Why were the words so hard to say? They were just a fact, that was it. Maybe one that’d make Gavin feel better, but still. Whether he knew or not wouldn’t change that it was true. “You were the first person to make me laugh in about six fucking years. Don’t think I’m gonna forget that any time soon.”

Gavin blinked at him, slowly, and Michael was just about to snap his fingers to make sure Gavin was still with him when the Brit made a suspicious sniffling noise and- okay, again with the hugging.

At least Gavin wasn’t strangling him this time. Though his neck was getting suspiciously wet, and he wasn’t sure which bodily fluid would be worse, really. On the one hand, he didn’t want to make Gavin cry. On the other hand, gross.

Grimacing, he patted Gavin’s back a couple of times, but it didn’t help much, especially since he was using his other hand to support them so they didn’t fall back onto the floor even further.

He rolled his eyes and grabbed at Gavin’s arms, “Come on, you fucking infant, let’s go back downstairs.”


	44. Chapter 44

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have had a SHITTY day, but hey, at least you get a chapter out of it?

Jack hadn’t been home for the whole morning and it was really starting to piss Michael off.

It wasn’t all bad, Geoff and Jack were apparently working on something at the office and Ryan had gone in with them to do some computer work in the warehouse, so Michael, Gavin, and Ray had had the place to themselves for the morning. Gavin had retrieved a waffle iron from somewhere and Ray had come out of the pantry with a box of brownie mix instead of pancake mix, so they all got a sugar high at eleven in the morning.

Then they just sort of crashed on the couch. Cartoons were on, but no one was paying attention. Ray was on his DS, Gavin and Michael were both on their phones.

Gavin, for all intents and purposes, didn’t seem to remember their conversation the night before. Which, either he really didn’t remember or was pretending not to, either way, Michael was grateful. It sucked that Gavin’s expression when Michael dropped down on the couch next to him was warily hopeful, but hopefully he could just ride that out.

It took a lot more than words to fix shit like this. You couldn’t say something, or make one gesture and expect it to be fixed.

He wasn’t going to stop being friends with Miles, Kerry, or Lindsay, fuck no, but he didn’t ever want to make Gavin feel like he wasn’t important again. And, he resolved, he needed to keep an eye on Ray too. Not as much, Ray very rarely needed direct attention, but it would be _so much worse_ if _Ray_ thought he didn’t care.

When the door to the garage opened, he mumbled, “ _Finally_ ,” to himself and stood. Gavin gave him a confused look, but Michael just snatched the little notebook he’d managed to scrounge up from the coffee table and said, “Back in a minute.”

Hey, luck was actually on his side for once. The only one who’d actually come home so far was Jack.

“Hey, you got a minute?”

Jack’s eyebrows almost disappeared into his hair, but he recovered quickly. “Yeah, sure. Want to talk in here?”

The spare bedroom, good, they wouldn’t be overheard. Shrugging, Michael stepped in, waited for Jack to follow, then shut the door.

Michael wasn’t sure what Jack had been expecting, but he _was_ positive that it wasn’t for Michael to sit down on the couch, flip open the notebook, and say, “So! Rent.”

God, Michael was going to regret not having his phone ready to take a photo of Jack’s face at that for the rest of his life.

Jack sighed like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Michael rolled his eyes as Jack sank onto the couch. “You just got your first paycheck yesterday, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, and don’t you fucking start. You _said_ I could pay you guys back.” ‘You _said_ ’, he sounded like a fucking child.

But Jack just nodded. “For the shopping, yeah, but we never talked about rent.”

Dammit. “We’re talking about it _now_.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Jack pressed his thumb and forefinger above either eye. “Technically, you’re just renting a room. And rent is already split five ways, so it’s not going to come out to much.”

“Dude, if you short change me on this, I’m just going to ask Ray and Gav.” It was a bluff, he never wanted to talk money shit with Ray _or_ Gav. Especially since he was trying to reconvince Gavin that they were actually friends. Throwing money into the situation was just going to muddy the waters.

But _Jack_ didn’t have to know that.

“I won’t, but you’re still not going to be paying as much as us.”

Unfortunately, it didn’t look like Jack was going to budge on that subject. Whatever, Michael could work on it later. “Just get me a figure, dude, it’s the beginning of the month.” Which brought him to flipping open the notebook. He hadn’t been able to find a pencil, and he was shit at math to begin with, so he’d had to cross a bunch of shit out. The receipts were kind of sticking out of the cover too. He maybe could’ve stood to make a clean copy of the page before opening the book where Jack could see. “And I’m pretty sure I can pay you back for the shopping stuff this paycheck too.”

“Hey man, don’t spend all your first paycheck on that, we’re not charging interest or anything.” Jack sounded genuinely upset at the idea, which. _Why_? “If you want, you can pay half now, and half in a couple of weeks, just. Get something for yourself too.”

Technically he actually was getting stuff for himself since he was just paying them back for everything they’d bought for him (including the glasses, and that was going to be one hell of a fight, he could already tell), but something told him this wasn’t the hill he wanted to die on.

“Whatever, if that’s what you need to sleep at night.”

Jack actually looked legitimately relieved, which. Michael couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or offended. He knew what he needed, he’d done the math, getting all sentimental about his first paycheck made no sense.

Yes, looking at the banking app on his phone and seeing that number was mind-boggling because he’d never had even half as much money in his whole life. But he didn’t want to be in debt to the guys for one second longer than he had to.

The sooner he paid off what he owed, the sooner he could start putting money away. He was going to stick around a while longer, until Gavin wasn’t wondering if he really cared anymore, and even then he’d probably have to text him a lot, until he was used to him being gone. But the guys were going to want their guest bedroom back at some point, would want it to be just them again.

And, when that happened, he wanted to be able to be able to get that apartment. One of the ones right by the office, in the same complex as Miles and Kerry.

Two months ago, an apartment would’ve been a pipe dream.

Much better on this side of the rainbow.

 

* * *

 

Michael had been planning this for most of the week, and the fact that Geoff and Caleb kept delaying had made him insanely on-edge for the past few days.

But it was finally happening. They were finally setting up in front of Geoff’s computer and loading up the short video Caleb had already made. Michael had sent the text. Now it was just a matter of if Gavin would make it in time-

“Hey, what’s up everyone, Caleb and Geoff doing Game Night!”

He wasn’t going to be able to do it if they finished the intro first-

“Alright, what are we doing this week, Caleb?”

“We’re playing flood on-”

 _There_ , the slap of Converse on tile outside the office.

Turning toward the door slightly, Michael braced himself.

Geoff sighed when Gavin threw open the door, a big grin on his face, “I was really hoping-” Michael moved, “-that we were gonna get through it without Gavin being a munge, b-”

“-But, I think Michael’s-”

“-but I think Michael stopped him.”

The laugh in Geoff’s voice was awesome, but Michael was kind of distracted by the fact that Gavin’s reaction to having his mouth covered was to immediately drop into the fetal position and try and squirm away, so now they were both on the floor and Michael was having to try and pin arms and legs that seemed miles long.

“Michael’s literally,” Geoff was half turned away from his microphone to watch them, “Michael’s literally _covering his mouth-_ ”

They were fully on the floor now, but on the upside, Michael had managed to mostly pin Gavin’s arms.

“-he’s just back there going ‘go to sleep, Gavin, go to sleep’.”

Michael turned to tell them to keep going with the video- Lindsay had come in, just like they’d talked about, and was filming it. But then Gavin rocked back, trying to free up his legs to kick at Michael while simultaneously trying and failing to screech ‘WHAT IS GAME NIGHT’ through the hand clamped over his mouth, so _that_ was something new to focus on.

Really, Michael should’ve been horrified that it was kinda hard to pin Gavin down, but really, it was also relieving. Gavin was a skinny shit, but he was putting up a hell of a fight. Going into the fetal position on instinct wasn’t the best kind of reaction to getting grabbed, but going for any weakness in a grip and using his legs when his arms were out of commission? That was some fucking good instinct.

He had to hook one of his legs around Gavin's and roll onto his back, trapping him against his chest so he couldn’t get any leverage against the floor and so Ray could walk past them. Most options exhausted, Gavin licked the palm of his hand, which was really the only part of this scenario Michael had actually been prepared for.

“Is Gavin _suffocating_?”

Geoff was still laughing, “He’s gonna _die_.”

Sure, Gavin’s face was red as hell, but he was fine. Michael could feel the rapid puffs of air against his hand from Gavin’s nose, was very careful not to block it. Though that was kind of difficult to do when he had to roll them back over and _pin Gavin to the ground_ so he could switch which hand was covering his mouth. _Way_ easier to get his right arm around the Brit’s shoulders to hold him still and keep him quiet with his left hand instead.

Gavin’s leg came up higher to try and get some leverage and Michael had to pin him back to the ground again and put most of his weight on the hand against his mouth to keep him from getting up while the back of Gavin’s head dug into his arm.

 _Fuck_ he was getting soft, but, even with the situation being what it was, Gavin was practically _crying_ with laughter, so there were worse things.

“Gavin’s gonna die!”

Gavin made a really loud noise through Michael’s hand at that, setting Geoff and Caleb off again and making this fucking thing take even _longer_.

He had his right hand wrapped around Gavin’s and Gavin’s other arm was trapped between them, so he was actually at a pretty good angle right then. That wasn’t going to last, though, and he had his jaw clamped shut so he didn’t ruin the mic audio by laughing, but he was grinning so hard he probably looked like a maniac.

“Luckily this is the _longest Game Night ever_.”

No shit.

Caleb, the saint, started to wrap it up after that. Which was good, because Michael’s hand was probably going to start getting pruny any second now and his beanie had been lost under his desk for about two minutes.

“What is Game Night?” Ray asked calmly, directly into the microphone before they could end the recording, single-handedly avenging Gavin’s indignity, the fucking traitor.

“Thank you, Ray.”

“You made it?” At Caleb’s nod, Michael finally released Gavin, who took a second to just lie on Michael’s arm and catch his breath.

Geoff was talking about putting the videos together as they stood and Michael retrieved his beanie, showed off his spit-covered hand. Everyone was laughing and it was perfect, what he’d been planning. The restraint in Gavin’s voice and face had been fading over the last few days, with Michael making a concentrated effort to seek him out for more than just work, but now it was totally gone. He was gasping for air and gagging a little because he'd apparently choked on his own spit, but he was laughing.

“He was putting up a _fight_!” Kind of embarrassing he'd let himself relax so much that _Gavin_ had been able to put up a fight, but also really fucking good to know that he could.

“What, with those little toothpick arms?”

“’Ey!”

And of course that set them all off again. This was going to make a good video, even if Michael’s face hurt from grinning now.

Then there was a slight knock on the already partially open door and Burnie poked his head in. “Hey Michael, can I borrow you for a second?”

And _Burnie_ looked kind of off, god, it was just one crisis after another around here.

Slapping Gavin on the back in passing, Michael followed Burnie through the door and then Burnie… hesitated.

Which immediately sent every alarm in Michael’s head blaring.

“Burnie?”

Glancing around, Burnie spotted the support office, empty since most everyone had headed to lunch. “C’mere.”

He shut the door behind them and now Michael was getting honestly worried. Burnie didn’t seem mad, and Michael was pretty sure he hadn’t done anything, so what was going on?

Burnie took two seconds for a deep breath before turning to look Michael in the eye and say, “There’s an FBI agent and a cop from New Jersey here that want to talk to you.”

Michael’s stomach bottomed out.

He’d heard the phrase ‘blood running cold’ before, but he just thought it was a metaphor, didn’t think it was _literal_ , didn’t think a person could physically feel their heart pause, have everything inside them go cold in a wave.

“D-”

Didn’t need to ask that, didn’t need to ask if Burnie knew why they were there, _he_ knew, should’ve known better than to think it was anything other than it was-

“Hey- hey, Michael!” Burnie grabbed his shoulders and he flinched backward hard, but Burnie didn’t let go, just held him until he looked him in the eye. “You say the word, okay, you say the fucking word and I get you a lawyer. You _don’t have to talk to them_ , you understand me? Not alone, not by yourself. You say the word and I get a lawyer here in ten minutes, you got that?”

Slowly, Michael nodded, and Burnie let go of his shoulders.

“Okay. Do you want me to make the call?”

Admittedly, Michael thought about it. If they were there for the reason he thought, he was definitely going to _need_ a lawyer. But he didn’t want to freak anyone out, make Burnie spend that money, without knowing for sure.

He shook his head.

Burnie’s lips thinned. “Gonna talk to them yourself?” At Michael’s nod, he said, “Okay. Follow me.”

They went to that same conference room, and Michael kind of hated that, because he’d liked that conference room before this.

Pausing with his hand on the handle, Burnie looked at him. “All you’ve got to do is say so, got it?”

Swallowing, Michael nodded again and Burnie opened the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #sorrynotsorry
> 
> Game Night Video (that's right, it's a real video): https://youtu.be/NAr6CUO3i9A


	45. Chapter 45

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another one of the chapters I'd spend forever rewriting if something didn't give me a kick in the pants- like your beautiful comments (xoxoxox)!! Or like the endless dr appts for the rest of the week (x.x). Either way, your prayers have been answered and I've updated quickly!
> 
> I feel like saying 'enjoy' would be a bit much, so how about 'have a chapter'?

In the room, there was a younger guy in a full suit and an older guy with just a shirt and tie. The younger one, probably the FBI agent, was looking around the plain room like he wasn’t impressed with what he was seeing, like he thought the whole situation was below him, and Michael hated him immediately.

The older guy, though. Was looking at Michael like he was a ghost.

Part of Michael wanted to ask why, why he was getting that look. But the rest of him was getting mad. They didn’t look like they were here for him. Not to arrest him, anyway. So why were they here, where the fuck did they get off coming into this place, this amazing place, and looking down on it, looking at him like he wasn’t supposed to be here?

Michael stepped into the room, and Burnie looked like he was going to follow before Michael shook his head. Burnie didn’t look happy about that at _all_ , but closed the door after giving Michael a final, long look.

Whatever they talked about in here, Michael wasn’t sure he wanted Burnie to know it.

The older guy started to stand, but Michael ignored him, pulling out a chair and dropping into it. He crossed his arms, leaned back, and crossed his legs too. He kind of wished he had a jacket on. He felt bare and exposed in just a T-shirt. Wanted something to cover up the pink scar the cop’s eyes were now glued to.

He suddenly had a much deeper appreciation for Geoff’s tattoos.

“Well?” he challenged, raising an eyebrow at the two. “My boss said you wanted to see me.”

The older guy hesitated for a bit, so the agent started talking. “Your name is Michael Jones?” This prompted the other guy to look at him like he was stupid which, hey, maybe they’d start fighting and Michael could leave.

“Who wants to know?”

The agent rolled his eyes, like Michael was a difficult teenager. Michael wasn’t going to do a damn thing to try and prove him wrong, either. If they wrote him off as a bitchy kid, they wouldn’t dig deeper. If they didn’t know anything about him, he wasn’t going to tell them a goddamn _thing_.

“I’m Agent Jenkins, from the FBI, and this is Detective Moretti, who was in charge of your missing person’s case.”

Huh, now that was interesting. Michael raised an eyebrow at the guy, “No shit? Huh, didn’t realize anyone even knew I was gone.”

That had the intended effect of making the guy stiffen, but Michael couldn’t tell what emotion was behind it. Whatever, if they were just here to close the missing person’s case, that was way better than what he’d been thinking. But if that was all-

“So why the fuck are _you_ here?” he asked Jenkins, who again, looked incredibly put upon just by sitting there in his nice suit.

“You reappeared and immediately crossed state lines,” Jenkins explained, like he was talking to a particularly stupid child. Bitch. “Technically, the good detective doesn’t have jurisdiction here. But the case needs closing, so here we are.”

Michael didn’t totally believe that. Mostly because now Jenkins was _looking_ at him, not just blankly staring in his general direction. He was _watching_ Michael’s reactions.

Maybe they did know.

“So what do you need to know so I can get out of here? I’ve got shit to do.” He might’ve been trying to be as obnoxious as possible, but really, that was only going to help him here.

Jenkins made a subtle show of lifting a briefcase onto the table and _slowly_ pulling out a folder and holy shit Michael wanted to grab his tie and tighten it by about six inches.

“It says here you went missing in late January to early February. We need to clarify exactly when. For the records.”

Michael narrowed his eyes. There was something sneaky about this guy. “Dude, I was _twelve_. I don’t remember the date.” Thinking back, though, he remembered thinking he had a few days at least before anyone would think to look for him, because he didn’t have school until Monday. “It was a Friday, that’s all I’ve got for you.”

“And you were a runaway, correct?”

For a second, the heat in his chest burned cold. “That question would answer itself if anyone involved in maintaining the foster system in Jersey managed to pull their heads out of their asses and see what was going on.”

Moretti cringed. He also still hadn’t said anything. Which was fine by Michael.

“And what exactly is that, Mr. Jones?”

This guy. He was fishing.

Sitting back in his chair again, Michael shrugged. “Why don’t you ask the kids? Someone fucking should.”

Jenkins made a humming noise, like he couldn’t care less that Michael had dodged the question. And then, he asked, “And did you run away before or after your foster parent sustained his fatal injury?”

The room abruptly went very quiet. Michael could hear the air conditioner, the muffled voices through the rest of the building.

“He’s _dead_?”

The agent looked like something had been confirmed for him. “Yes, Craig Turner passed away from complications of an untreated injury on February ninth of that year.”

Michael laughed. A little because he knew the guy was waiting for his reaction, but mostly because if he didn’t, he was going to _freak the fuck out_. “Oh that’s fucking _phenomenal_. That shit is _karma_.”

“I-” Hey, Moretti wasn’t incapable of speech, who the fuck knew. “I was the one who searched the house when they couldn’t find you at school-”

Michael didn’t want to talk about that. “Good for you, champ. Are we done here?”

“Now listen, the state of that place, the blood-”

“The only thing I have left to say is that you guys need to take a serious fucking look at your vetting process for these people because that dickhead shouldn’t have been allowed _near_ kids, let alone given custody of one!” Michael was getting loud, but he couldn’t help it.

It wasn’t _about_ him. It _wasn’t_. It was about the _other_ kids, the overcrowded houses, the kids who could barely dress themselves trying to fix their own food at best and cowering from any adult they saw at worst.

The fact that being the only kid in the house was sometimes the most terrifying circumstance possible.

Because the adults who weren’t looking to get money out of the foster system, who just took the one kid, _wanted_ something from them. And it wasn’t ever good.

Now Moretti seemed indignant. “For _ten years_ we thought you’d been _killed_ , I led a witch hunt through all the foster homes in the county-!”

Slamming his hands down on the desk, Michael stood. “Mother _fucker_ , for those ten years I was on the fucking _streets_! New Jersey, February, how the fuck do you think that went? And it was _still_ better than getting shuttled around those shitholes! Save your election speech, asshole, I don’t want to hear it. If you gave a rat’s ass, you’d have found me, I didn’t leave the fucking city. Don’t make me a martyr story for your career, you fuck, don’t try and make _me_ feel _bad_ about ‘disrespecting’ your little speech or lumping you in with other cops, you’re just as bad as the fucking rest if it takes the murder of a goddamn twelve-year-old to make you do your _fucking_ job!”

Moretti flinched back like Michael had punched him and he was really lucky that hadn’t actually happened.

He hadn’t done anything strenuous, but Michael was breathing hard, didn’t feel like he was getting enough _air_.

Turning back to Jenkins, he met his flat gaze. “Anything. Else?”

Jenkins stared into his eyes for a long, long moment before breaking the contact like snapping a rubber band. “No, you’re free to go.”

“But-”

“As I said earlier, _Detective_ , you have no jurisdiction here-”

Michael didn’t hear the rest. He was already out the door.

 

* * *

 

To be perfectly honest, Michael didn’t remember how he’d ended up here.

He was in the same office Gavin had retreated to a couple of days ago. He thought so, anyway. It looked different, in the daytime.

Still, he could see the desk. It looked right.

He really should leave before whoever this office belonged to came back from lunch, or wherever the hell they were. At the very least, he should move. He was a pathetic picture, in a fucking ball in the corner, on the other side of a bookshelf on the same wall as the door.

But hey, no one could see him if they walked in, at least.

When he thought about moving, though, he realized the reason he had his arms across his knees, gripping fistfuls of his pants, was because both his hands were unmistakably shaking. And the idea of standing up, moving away from the wall, had him cringing back.

Maybe he’d just stay here for a bit.

Resting his forehead on his folded arms, he tried to just focus on breathing, as deeply as he could, curled into the ball he was.

That didn’t really last, though.

Holy shit.

How did he get away with that? How the _fuck_ did he get away with that, the agent had known something was up, but let him go, what the fuck-

He didn’t know for sure, though, didn’t _really_ know what had happened, didn’t want to know.

It could’ve been anything, anyone, what happened when he left didn’t-

The tinkling of a little bell had him jerking his head up just in time to see a little orange head poke around the desk.

“Mrrr?”

Michael exhaled heavily, tried to ignore the fact that he’d just gotten an adrenaline rush over a _cat_.

The cat made another noise and came over, long tail sticking straight up, the tip of it twitching a little. It was fat as shit, different from the scrawny street cats Michael’d known, and infinitely less skittish.

He’d liked the street cats okay. If you were scouting a place to sleep and there were cats around, you could be pretty sure there’d be a minimum of rodents and bugs. The big ones, anyway.

It sat its fat ass right in front of him and made an impatient noise. Michael made an impatient noise right back because seriously, what the fuck?

After a short staredown, the cat got up and started headbutting his leg.

What the hell?

He pulled his leg back and went to push the cat away, but it twisted to butt at the palm of his hand instead, purring loudly.

It had tricked him into petting it.

Little shit.

Its fur was soft, though. Warm too. Like it’d been lying in the sunbeam on the other side of the desk.

His hand was still shaking, but the cat didn’t seem to mind, with how hard it was pressing into his fingers. He scratched under its collar and took the opportunity to check the tag. ‘Joe’. He was pretty sure he’d heard about this cat on the podcast, once or twice.

They both stiffened at a soft knock on the door. But where Michael was jerking in surprise, Joe was padding over to it, ears up.

“Michael? Can I come in?”

Burnie. Must’ve seen him go in here earlier, whenever that was.

He opened his mouth, but nothing really came out. Joe made up for that with a very loud cry, though.

The door creaked open slowly. Just a sliver at first, then a bit more.

“Michael?”

Just seeing Burnie out of the corner of his eye was enough to make Michael dip his head a little. How was he supposed to act, here? He didn’t really want to look at Burnie, or explain anything, but Burnie’d come looking for him. Surely he’d expect answers.

Shutting the door without a sound behind him, Burnie walked over slowly, then crouched down, so Michael didn’t have much of a choice but to look up at him.

Burnie looked worried. Like he was doing his best to read Michael and find out what was going on, but was having a hard time with it. To be fair, _Michael_ wasn’t sure what was going on in his head just then either. He didn’t know what he was feeling. “You okay?”

What the hell kind of question was that?

Dropping his gaze again, Michael shrugged and heard Burnie sigh.

“Would it be alright if I took you home?”

Yeah, it was probably for the best he wasn’t underfoot. He was useless like this, and someone was going to want this office back at some point.

The loft was deserted and Burnie led them to a side exit instead of out the front, both of which Michael was stupidly grateful for. He didn’t know what he looked like right then, definitely couldn’t be a normal person around the other employees, never mind the guys.

And Burnie didn’t ask him anything else in the car either, just turned on the A/C and made sure Michael had his seatbelt on before turning the engine over and driving off.

It wasn’t a long drive back to the guys’ house. Ten, maybe fifteen minutes?

But they were there. Michael could’ve sworn they’d just pulled out the gate in front of the office, but Burnie was parking the car in front of the sidewalk that led up to the front door.

Michael unbuckled his seatbelt, but Burnie hesitated.

“I don’t suppose you want any company? Yeah,” he sighed in response to Michael headshake, “I didn’t think so. But you’ll text if you need anything, at least?” Michael paused in getting out of the car. “Me or one of the guys?”

Offering up a sarcastic salute, Michael slammed the door shut and hurried to get into the house.

The bright sunshine just seemed wrong.

When he went inside the heavy door locked loudly behind him. Which was good, except _now_ what the fuck was he supposed to do?

He needed to not think about it, he’d lived the last ten years not thinking about it, and it hadn’t made much of a difference to him then.

And he tried, he did, he went into the guest room and booted up the computer, like he could even _think_ about doing some kind of work. But the thought was gnawing a hole in his stomach, nothing else felt _real_ outside his head, like something he was dreaming up to avoid facing reality.

But how was he supposed to find out, it was ten fucking years ago and asking about it would be suspicious as fuck and he doubted it’d be online, so how-

Finally, he used his computer to look up a phone number.

Carefully, making sure his stupid shaking fingers hit the right fucking buttons, he dialed it into his phone.

He hadn’t realized he’d actually pressed the call button until he heard a muffle voice and quickly raised the phone to his ear.

“-Public Library, how can I help-?”

“Is Maggie there?” Great, he sounded like he’d been run over.

“Michael?” Thank fuck. “Is that you? What’s-?”

“I need a favor.”


	46. Chapter 46

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yoooo, it's another chapter I'm posting so I'll stop looking at it, are any of you really surprised?

Maggie didn’t ask questions, even though she had every reason to. Just listened to his request, told him to leave it to her, and hung up.

Thirty excruciating minutes later, the email came and he had his answer.

He deleted the email. Then went to his Trash folder and emptied it. Then put his phone in a drawer so he wouldn’t break it.

Then just stood in the middle of the room, with clenched fists that were shaking for an _entirely_ different reason than they had been earlier. He couldn’t _break_ anything in this room, none of it _belonged_ to him.

He’d just been freeloading here for _months_ , using the guys’ shit, eating their food, and the whole time, they had no idea-

When the nausea hit, he made it into the bathroom, barely, but not quite to the toilet. Fortunately, he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so all that came up was bile, yellow and foamy and disgusting.

All down the front of his shirt, on the tile and the mat around the toilet.

It was embarrassing, but it gave him something to _do_.

He stripped off his shirt, used it to mop up the tile as best he could, then bundled it up in the mat and shakily got to his feet. Felt weird to be walking through the house without a shirt on, but it wasn’t nearly enough to break through the current fog in his brain as more than a footnote.

The washing machine was empty, which was the only half-decent thing today had going for it. He shoved the bundle of cloth in, added probably twice the amount of necessary detergent, and left it to do its thing.

Swiping a roll of paper towels on the way back, he set to cleaning the floor. Not that there was that much to clean, just residue really. But he wet the tiles down and scrubbed away until nothing came up.

The small trashcan in there was really just serving one purpose in his life.

Even after everything was cleaned and thrown out, he could still smell it. _Taste_ it. He brushed his teeth for several minutes and it still didn’t help. Eventually, he just stripped off the rest of his clothes and stepped into the shower.

At first, it was cold, but he didn’t move. His skin prickled with goosebumps, but he just stood there until the water got warm, then hot, letting it pound down on the back of his head and neck. _Too_ hot, really, but he didn’t move for that either.

Then it started trickling down his arms and- stung, why did it sting, he must’ve gotten carpet burns when he was wrestling with-

Oh shit, _Gavin_.

He doubled over again, but the dry heaves didn’t bring anything up. Just clenched up the muscles in his stomach, forced him to brace a hand on the ledge where he kept all the bottles so he wouldn’t fall.

What the fuck had he been _thinking_? Soft or not, he _knew_ things about fighting that Gavin never could, it was a miracle he hadn’t seriously hurt him, or _worse_ -

He kept running out of breath, like he was just straight up forgetting to _breathe_.

What had he been _thinking_? Not just with Gavin, but with the whole thing, thinking he could learn to be an actual person, like he wasn’t already fucked up forever, like he hadn’t crossed the line he’d wanted to avoid crossing for as long as he could without even _knowing_ -

The _crack_ of his knees hitting the tile forced him to inhale, blink away the spots in his vision, though he couldn’t remember when they got there.

Faint trails of blood trickled across the tile, carried by the water to swirl down the drain, but he didn’t _care_.

Why the fuck was this _happening_ , why _now_ , why when he was just getting to the point where he felt like a _person_ sometimes?! Not _always_ , but _sometimes_ he could feel it. Could make friends, stay the weekend, play games, people who didn’t even _know_ where he came from, didn’t _care-_

He slammed his hand down on the tile. It didn’t have the same satisfying _crack_ , but at least it made him feel like he’d _done_ something.

So he did it again. And again. And again.

By the time the water ran cold, he was panting, just huddled under the stream on all fours, trying to keep remembering that he needed to actually breathe, because somehow, he kept forgetting. He shut the water off with his left hand, used it to brace himself as he stood.

The towel was navy so, thankfully, the blood didn’t show up on it. Not that there was a lot of blood, the water had washed most of it away. Just little spots, mostly.

Mechanically, he got dressed and sat on the edge of the bed.

The cold air from the vent overhead brushed his neck and hair, making him shiver, but not making him move.

His throat hurt. From being sick, sure, but it felt raw and scratchy, like he’d been screaming, even though he hadn’t. At least, he was pretty sure he hadn’t.

It probably wasn’t good that he couldn’t be sure about that.

What was he supposed to _do_? He couldn’t justify being here, around these people, anymore. He was _dangerous_ , just like he’d told Ryan.

But he couldn’t _go_ , either. He didn’t know his way around this city, wouldn’t get far, and then they’d want to know why, they’d want an answer for why he all of a sudden tried to _go_ , and he couldn’t tell them, could never tell them, even if he was pretty sure they had a right to know, it wasn’t even safe for _that_.

Maybe he could just hurry to pay them back and get an apartment as fast as he could. It didn’t have to be the one by the office, he was sure there was a shittier one somewhere he could afford sooner, get _away_ , before he could hurt anyone-

“Michael?”

He’d been resting his head in his good hand, even though he didn’t remember when he put it there, but at the voice, he jumped, sucking in air and whipping his head around toward the door-

“It’s okay, sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Jack’s eyes were wide, but his voice was soft as he took a few steps into the room, like he was specifically trying to keep Michael calm, which would’ve been insulting if Michael’s heart wasn’t still racing. “I knocked,” he did? “but you didn’t answer, and your door was unlocked, so…”

So he decided to just come in and, presumably, check and see if Michael’d made a run for it.

Fucking fantastic.

Geoff appeared in the doorway, “Everything alright in here?” After getting some kind of psychic okay from Jack, Geoff looked over to Michael and. His eyes widened?

Did he really look that bad?

“Michael, you’re bleeding.”

What? No he wasn’t, not anymore-

Geoff hurried over and- _knelt_ in front of him, what-?

He was wearing his Achievement Hunter pants, the ones Geoff had given him back in New York. And they were mostly black, but one of the stars was over his right knee and a red stain had spread across it.

For some reason, _that_ , of all things, was what made a lump in Michael’s throat. He swallowed hard, and fought the emotion back, but it sank in his stomach like a stone. He’d never have put those on if he thought he was still bleeding. There had to be some kind of way to get the stain out, right?

Geoff was deftly folding up the leg of the pants, to the point where they ended just above Michael’s knee. He grimaced when he had to peel the cloth away from the skin, the partially-dried blood making it harder, but was careful, not tugging too hard.

“Jack, can you-?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

Jack’s footsteps vanished into the house and Geoff looked up into Michael’s face. His hand hadn’t left its place around the back of Michael’s calf, warm skin so distinct it was distracting.

“What happened?”

There wasn’t room to weasel out of the question. Michael didn’t think the situation was anything like the ones that had pissed Geoff off in the past, but that same anger was there, the one Geoff had instead of worry.

Anger was easier to deal with, anyway. He knew by this point not to try and dodge questions with Geoff, when he was like this. And at least he had an actual answer.

He swallowed again, ignored the rasp in his voice when he talked. “Slipped,” he admitted. “In the shower.”

Geoff’s forehead creased, like he didn’t like the answer. Which sucked for him, since that was all he was getting. It wasn’t really a lie, since he didn’t remember exactly what had happened.

Letting go of Michael’s right leg, he shifted a little to roll up the pants on the left side.

The skin there was split too, but not quite as bad. Geoff frowned at it anyway, running his thumb underneath the curve of the knee.

And then he grabbed for Michael’s hand.

It was curled into a fist, pulled in close to his stomach, and he pulled it even closer when Geoff’s long, inked fingers wrapped around his wrist. That had Geoff looking up into his face again, even if Michael wasn’t looking back this time. Was just focusing on the little symbols on his fingers, ignoring the rest of him.

“Michael,” Geoff’s voice was insistent, not moving on until Michael finally looked at him. His thumb started moving over the inside of Michael’s wrist, back and forth, once their eyes met. “Come on buddy, let me see.”

He didn’t _want_ to, but he couldn’t fight Geoff, not really. Not when he looked like that.

Letting out a shaky breath, he reluctantly let Geoff pull his wrist out, unclenched his fingers when his palm was turned up.

He hadn’t looked directly at his hand since getting out of the shower, but Geoff’s intake of breath told him plenty.

Jack walked back into the room, looked at Michael’s hand, and breathed out an emphatic, “ _Fuck_.”

“We’re gonna need ice,” Geoff voice was strained as he took the weird first aid kit from New York from Jack’s limp hand.

“No shit.”

Jack left again and Michael finally looked down at his hand.

It wasn’t _that_ bad, really. The only broken skin was on the heel of his hand. Sure, everything was turning colors, but that wasn’t a huge deal. Bruises, bones, healed. Cuts were the things that got infected.

Squinting down at Geoff (he hadn’t put his glasses back on yet), Michael asked, “What time is it?”

Pausing in pulling a bottle out of the box, Geoff gave him a look, but hey, Michael wasn’t asking about the _day_ , so it should be fine. “… just after four.”

Michael heart tripped into double time and he started to stand, “Rage Quit, I didn’t-”

“Quit it,” Geoff pinned one of his thighs to the bed, “we got it in the upload queue. We just used the last render you sent us and put the title card and bumpers on.”

Oh. He could’ve done better, felt a little sick he hadn't, but at least it was going up.

It wasn’t until he sat back that Geoff let up on his grip, soaking some gauze in whatever liquid was inside the bottle. Without meaning to, Michael twitched at the sting when he started cleaning at the cut on his knee and Geoff actually fucking blew on it.

Letting out a painful sort of laugh, Michael asked, “What, you gonna fucking kiss it better too?”

Not missing a single fucking beat, Geoff smirked up at him, then tightened his hand around the back of Michael’s leg, tugging him a little farther down on the bed so he could actually fucking land a kiss just above the top of Michael's knee.

“Oh my fucking _god_ ,” Michael was going for exasperated, but it came out kind of strangled. He automatically shifted, but couldn’t brace himself with his good hand, and Geoff still had a solid grip on his leg anyway.

Geoff moved on like he _hadn’t_ just done that, moving the party over to Michael’s right knee, which really had taken the worst of the fall. When he used the alcohol or whatever the fuck it was _that_ time, Michael stared resolutely at the far wall, even when Geoff very obviously looked up at him to gauge his reaction.

He looked down when Geoff took his hand, though. Assholery aside, he was being really careful. His grip on Michael’s hand was solid, but he was a light touch, only enough to clean the scrapes, like he thought Michael would react badly to a little pain.

“How many fucking times did you ‘slip’, dude?” Geoff asked quietly. It didn’t sound like he was expecting an answer, really, so Michael didn’t give him one.

Geoff shouldn’t be patching him up anyway. Michael shouldn’t be letting him. It wasn’t like he was seriously injured, certainly didn’t rate _this_ level of care, and even if he had, it was something he could do himself and he shouldn’t be this close to any of the guys, even Geoff, really.

But he couldn’t bring himself to pull away.

They sat there in silence until Jack came back, holding something lumpy wrapped in a dishtowel. “Here.”

Geoff was finishing wrapping Michael’s hand with gauze (which was some fucking serious overkill for a few scrapes, but hey, no one asked _him_ ), so he taped it down, took the towel-wrapped bag of ice, and made him wrap his fingers around it. “Hold onto that.”

The towel blocked a lot of the cold at first, but it seeped through quickly. Michael’d never been a fan of the cold, but he wasn’t going to be _that_ big an ass.

Instead, he did the first thing he could think of to distract himself. “What’s that?”

Geoff followed his gaze to the weird looking box. He hadn’t let go of his leg. His fingers were absently running along the scar on the back of his calf. Michael tried to ignore it. “The… first aid kit?”

“I know _that_ , asshole, I’m talking about the box.”

 _That_ , apparently, rated a horrified look roughly three times worse than the one Geoff had given him after noticing he was bleeding. “It’s a tackle box.” At Michael’s blank stare, he pressed on. “C’mon, you- tackle for _fishing_?”

“The fuck is ‘ _tackle_ ’?”

Geoff looked like someone had just murdered his puppy, and Michael jumped when Jack laughed and shook his head. “You’re in for it now.”

“I- you-” Geoff took a deep breath and started packing up the first aid kit. “I’m taking you fucking fishing when your hand's better, next long weekend we have, what the fuck…”

Fishing. Geoff wanted to take him fucking _fishing_ , what the fuck kind of wholesome-

“The others should be back in an hour or two.” Jack said, almost too casually, like a test. “We’re thinking of getting take-out, any preferences?”

“I’m not hungry.” He didn’t mean to say that, certainly didn’t mean to say it so fast, bite it out like he had, but at the mention of food, his stomach had flipped and it had just sort of happened.

Geoff and Jack exchanged a very obvious, very significant look at that and goddammit, he _knew_ that was weird, _knew_ him turning down food when he could physically eat wasn’t like him (was, actually, stupid, but better than wasting it, especially if they were buying it for him). And now they were probably jumping to all sorts of conclusions.

And they probably weren’t wrong, either.

How much did they know? What had Burnie told them about why he took him home in the middle of the day? Did they know about the detectives? Did Burnie have any idea what they’d talked about?

They hadn’t asked any questions, just come home and patched him up.

He should’ve been able to resist better, instead of letting them get too close. Now they’d expect it, now they’d think he was somehow better than he was, like he was okay to approach, safe, but he _wasn’t_ and he couldn’t _tell them_ that.

But he’d wanted it. Still did. Sometimes their touch felt like it was burning him, but he still wanted it. He didn’t know what to do, when they reached out, but he wanted to learn.

He was so fucking weak, taking any tiny scrap he could get and clinging to it like a fucking child. He should be able to do better.

They went to put the first aid kit away, something that Michael pretended to believe took both of them and wasn’t a thin cover to go somewhere to discuss what to do about him.

As soon as they were out of earshot, he closed the door and flipped the lock.


	47. Chapter 47

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the erratic update schedule, I have the attention span of a concussed goldfish.

Michael wasn’t hiding.

Hiding implied he was scared of something. Like there was something he didn’t want to know where he was. Everyone already knew where he was.

“Michaaaaaael…” Gavin’s voice was distinct even through the door. Despite the whine, the knocks against the wood were gentle. “C’mon, don’t you wanna eat?”

His stomach was tight, and it honestly could’ve been either hunger or nausea at the thought of food, it was hard to tell and he didn’t want to read into it too much.

So he just curled into a tighter ball and pulled the blankets over his head.

It didn’t make him feel _better_ , really. Especially when he heard soft voices in the hall and the sound of people walking away. But it was easier to doze, in and out of sleep, and not have to think about it all too much.

He knew he couldn’t avoid it forever. Didn’t even want to, really. As tempting as it was to try and pretend it never happened, it wasn’t fair to the guys for them to not know who was living under their roof. Of course, he couldn’t tell them either. Rock, hard place.

As much as he _should_ try and stay away from them, he also couldn’t stop picturing Gavin curled into a ball in a dark office, Ray sitting alone in the garage. He didn’t want them to think he was tired of them, as fucking inane as that sounded to him.

And then there were the others. Geoff and Jack absolutely knew something was up, even if they weren’t prying. Which was almost worse. At least if they asked, he’d know what they knew. Had Burnie talked to them? Fuck, had they actually seen the cops at some point? Probably not, since they didn’t feel the need to kick him out of the house, but they were weird about stuff like that, so maybe?

Ryan knew fucking everything, whether he was told or not. Michael half expected him to pick the lock to the bedroom and walk in with the police report.

But at that point, who knew? For all he was straightforward, Ryan and logic did not exist in the same fucking space-time continuum. Ryan could either turn him in or compliment him on getting away with it, Michael wouldn’t really be surprised by either one of those things.

Flipping over onto his stomach, he buried his face in the mattress and clamped the pillow down over his head.

He wasn’t going to think about it.

 

* * *

 

When he woke up the next morning to bright sunlight filtering through the blanket and sheets over his face, he practically had a fucking heart attack.

The blankets got tangled around his legs when he tried to throw them off too fast and he almost fell out of bed. His phone on the bedside table told him it was half past eleven and there wasn’t so much as a text from the guys _why the fuck_.

He hesitated barely a second before he opened the door out into the hall. The house was quiet, obviously empty even though he hadn’t even set foot outside the bedroom yet.

Why had they left without him?

His heart was a knot in his chest and his hand throbbed in time with his pulse as he walked hesitantly into the kitchen. There was a white box on the bar, and a note with his name on it. There was no signature, but he recognized Jack’s handwriting by now.

_‘We thought you might need a day. Left you some donuts and kolaches. Please eat them.’_

Well, shit.

Sure, he wasn’t positive he could jump right back into acting normal, but he could at least pretend. He wasn’t looking for any fucking special treatment here, especially not now.

He wasn’t really hungry, but he opened the box anyway. The last thing he needed was for the guys to get even more upset and weirded out over him not eating. Normal was going to be hard, but he could at least try this. Even if he couldn’t finish it, it was better than nothing.

Biting into a kolache, he pulled out his phone to check his email. There wasn’t a lot there, general announcements, nothing that let him be productive from the house.

Goddammit.

Texting one of the guys was always a possibility, but Ray and Gav didn’t know how to drive, so not only would one of them have to take out the time to pick him up, but he’d be trapped in the car for a while with either Ryan, Geoff, or Jack. He didn’t really feel like talking to any of them, at the moment. Wasn’t sure he could manage normal.

It wasn’t until he was grimacing at the stickiness of his fingers that he realized the cardboard box was empty. Somehow, he’d gone through three kolaches and two donuts without really paying attention.

Still, the fact that his body had something to burn now wasn’t necessarily good. Before he’d been empty, but as the energy came creeping back, he just felt worse, like he suddenly had the energy to care again and thinking about everything was the opposite of what he wanted.

But really, what choice did he have?

The faint sound of the door to the garage opening had him snapping his head up in alarm. He hastily closed the box, no time to throw it away properly, and took the note before scrambling back to the guest room, closing the door quietly behind him so maybe they wouldn’t think he’d run from them.

It wasn’t until he was safely behind the locked door that he wondered why he _had_ run. Yes, being normal was going to be tough at the moment, but he was going to have to face the guys _some_ time. He fucking lived with them, there was no way he could avoid them, and the longer he did, the more awkward it’d get when he eventually did face them again.

But just the idea of going out and talking to whoever might be there made him regret having eaten so much.

Maybe he could try later.

His fingers were still sticky and there was a sugary aftertaste in his mouth that was really starting to bug him, so he busied himself by washing his hands (being careful with the bandaged one), and brushing his teeth.

When he turned off the faucet, he thought he heard someone outside his door, but didn’t hear anything after that, so he couldn’t really be sure.

He paced, listening hard, but not willing to actually go out and see who was there. Ray, he was pretty sure of, but not much beyond that. There was at least one other person, but Jack and Ryan sounded so similar that it was hard to say for sure.

Whoever it was, they left quickly, though. The house went quiet and he could see the shadow of the car drive past the bedroom window.

Hesitantly, he opened the door, planning to go back and clean up the mess he’d left in the kitchen, but he almost tripped over the plastic bag that had been set in front of his door.

The bag was white, and his heart sank when he recognized the logo. Slowly shifting to his knees, he opened it up.

The first thing he saw was a 3DS box. He pulled it out mechanically, staring down at it, not sure why he couldn’t feel anything. It was blue, dark blue and black, and brand new, not even pre-owned. There was a sticky note on the front with the words ‘ _Friend Code_ ’ and a string of digits.

He was pretty sure he had Ray to thank for this. What had he been thinking? This wasn’t a small thing, this was expensive shit.

And worst of all, the bag wasn’t even _empty_ yet.

Swallowing, he forced himself to reach out and pull out what was left.

Two game cases. Mario Kart 7 and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. No receipt. _Of course_.

Sitting back on his heels, Michael took a few deep, shaky breaths.

Shit.

 _Shit_.

Standing, he gathered everything up and dumped it on the bed, then walked out to the kitchen. The empty box was gone ( _dammit_ ), but he could at least wipe down the bar and take out the trash.

When he got back to the bedroom, he closed and locked the door behind him, then sat on the bed and stared at the boxes.

What was Ray hoping for here? Had Michael closing himself off for half a day really made Ray go out and buy a bunch of shit in the hopes of bringing him out again?

No, no that was something Gavin would do.

Maybe Ray just wanted someone to play with, but that didn’t explain Zelda, a single-player game.

With shaking fingers, he opened the box, pulled out the DS and the charger, started charging it.

He made his way through the setup slowly, finding it hard to really focus on what he needed to do. When he finally got to where he could, he added in Ray’s friend code, then realized ray needed his too.

Texting wasn’t something he really wanted to do, but at least Ray probably wasn’t going to try and turn it into a conversation when Michael sent him a random string of numbers.

In fact, he only responded ‘ _I’ll set up a race in 10_ ’.

Pretending to be normal was way easier when he didn’t actually have to talk.

 

* * *

 

Racing with the Ray and, eventually, Gav, was good. He had no idea how much work they were getting done, racing so much, but it was good.

He was glad of the breaks there were, because his hand throbbed when he had to hold onto the 3DS for too long, but he was more glad when the games started back up again.

Being left alone with his thoughts wasn’t something he really wanted at the moment.

At the same time, though… sometimes he just couldn’t think. Found himself staring blankly at the wall or ceiling for upwards of an hour, waiting for the text from Ray to get ready for a new race and only feeling like a few seconds had passed when it arrived.

He wasn’t sure which was worse, really.

Even when they came back, they didn’t try and get him to come out of the bedroom. He just got another text from Ray, saying he was setting up a race. It was kind of weird they weren’t getting tired of racing with him, but he wasn’t going to question it.

The house was mostly quiet, beyond the door. The soft voices he could make out sounded like Ray and Gav, so maybe the others had gone somewhere else?

Knowing that no one would come looking for him for a while was a relief.

They played for a while, long enough that the throbbing of his hand faded into the background of his mind. Racing them around the track was mind-numbing and fun at the same time.

He’d gotten so used to just saying and doing the most ridiculous thing for videos that, when Gavin blueshelled him three inches from the finish line and Ray sped past him, he didn’t even think about the consequences of storming out to yell at them until he found himself actually in the living room, staring down at the couch where they sat, chest still heaving from his outburst.

Shit.

Gavin was staring up at him like he was the best thing ever ( _why_ ), but Ray just busted out laughing. “Dude, all’s fair in love and kart.”

Michael jabbed a finger at them, narrowing his eyes and fighting the urge to turn tail and run. “If you wanna fight dirty, we can fucking fight dirty.”

“So, Battle Mode then?”

Aaaand they were staring at him. Waiting to see what he’d do. If he’d go back into the bedroom.

Well. It wasn’t like he could’ve stayed in there forever. He was already out, might as well bite the bullet.

Dropping heavily into the nearby recliner, he pulled his legs up onto the seat and rested the new DS on them. “Every man for him-fucking-self here, no teaming up.”

“Says you.” But Ray was smiling, they both were. It made Michael’s stomach hurt because they didn’t _know_ , they were letting their guard down around him when they shouldn’t, because they didn’t _know_ , but he couldn’t tell them either. There was just no real way to keep them safe except for him to leave as soon as possible.

He tamped down on the frustration, though. Focused on the game as much as possible.

Focused on it even more when he heard the door to the garage open.

He couldn’t help hunching further down in the chair, though, when he heard heavy footsteps approaching the room.

“Oh, I see how it is,” Ryan’s voice rang out, casual and joking, and Michael felt some of the tension go out of his muscles. “We go get the food while you get to have a little LAN party without us.”

“Hey Ryan, 2005 called, they want their gaming vocabulary back.”

“2005 can kiss my ass.”

Michael really was trying to focus on the game, but he couldn’t help tracking Ryan out of his peripheral vision. Ryan passed close to his chair, a little too close, but just set a small stack of pizza boxes on the coffee table.

They smelled _really_ good.

Silence reigned for a beat when Geoff and Jack caught sight of them, and Michael started to tense up a little, but all that happened was Geoff asking, “Who’s winning?”

“Who the fuck do you think?” Michael grumbled under his breath, narrowly dodging a green shell from Ray.

… he hadn’t actually meant to say that out loud, but now Geoff was laughing so that was… maybe good?

“Don’t let the pizza get cold.” Jack brought paper plates and napkins. Geoff set down some beers and a soda for Ray.

Michael didn’t put down his DS until everyone else had already grabbed some pizza. He felt awkward again, like he had when he’d first started staying with them. Which, that was good, really. He shouldn’t have gotten so comfortable here in the first place. This wasn’t his home, he couldn’t intrude here forever.

Still, he couldn’t make that _too_ obvious, or Jack and Geoff would want to Talk. So he grabbed a couple pieces of pizza and a beer.

Then he really regretted grabbing a beer because there was no way he was going to be able to twist the cap off or work a bottle opener with his right hand so fucked up.

He startled a little when the beer was plucked out of his bandaged hand and looked up to see Geoff pop the cap off before casually handing it back to him.

His face felt really hot, but the beer was cold, so hopefully they’d cancel each other out.

It wasn’t until about an hour later, when most of the pizza was gone and Michael’d had enough beers to feel warm and relaxed that it hit him.

Friday. It was Friday.

And instead of going to the cookout, they’d come back to the house. They’d grabbed pizza, and beer, and come back to the house because he was a fucking infant who’d locked himself in the bedroom and refused to come out.

He wanted to _die_ , he kept fucking up their lives even when he wasn’t _doing_ anything.

Thankfully, most of the guys had gone to start getting ready for bed. Ryan and Jack were still in the kitchen, but they couldn’t see him bury his face in his hands and try not to scream from their angle.

Why did he keep fucking everything up so bad? Was he fucking _cursed_? Had his mom offended a witch when she was pregnant or something??

“Hey.”

The alcohol kept Michael from jumping out of his skin, but only just. Jack was standing by the chair he had yet to leave, looking as concerned as ever.

God, and Jack had _just_ stopped looking at him like that too.

“Can I see your hand?”

Michael really didn’t want Jack so close, didn’t want him touching him, but he also knew that saying that would make Jack look even worse, so he just held his hand out without saying anything at all.

Sitting on the edge of the coffee table, Jack carefully unwrapped his hand, frowning hard at all the colors his skin had turned. “You need to still be icing this. The swelling’s pretty bad, doesn’t it hurt?”

A hysterical laugh bubbled up his throat so fast he had to bite down hard on his lip to keep it from coming out.

‘Doesn’t it hurt’? Like he couldn’t function and still be in pain. Like pain somehow took over everything else.

The only thing that really made it hard to function was being sick. Cuts, bruises, hell, even broken bones were fine, as long as they weren’t your legs.

A banged up hand was _nothing_.

He pulled his hand back, skin crawling, and ignored the look on Jack’s face. The scrapes weren’t bad enough to need new bandages, on his hand _or_ his knees. There wasn’t anything they could do for him, really.

Ice clinked behind him and he turned his hand to see Ryan holding out a glass of ice water and it wasn’t until he took it, confused, that he passed over two small pills as well.

“Painkillers,” Ryan supplied casually, almost jarringly candid against Jack’s heavy air of upset. “Might not help with the swelling much, but it’ll be easier to deal with.”

… Michael may have entirely forgot painkillers were a thing. Painkillers weren’t really necessary for most things, only when they were _really_ bad. If the pain didn’t distract you too much, you were good.

But Jack would probably feel better if he took them. Which was probably why Ryan had brought them over. Smart guy.

He took the painkillers without a word, then raised an eyebrow at Jack until he sighed, not in exasperation, or frustration, but just like he was _sad_. Then he stood up and walked away.

The cold glass stung Michael hand, but he pressed it against his forehead anyway.

What the fuck was he supposed to _do_?


	48. Chapter 48

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, I am not dead, very sleepy, love you all, you're the greatest, <3

Michael didn’t understand why he was so angry.

The fact that pretty much his whole persona in videos was to be a crude, angry bastard was really paying off because holy _fuck_.

He tried to hold it in most of the time, especially around Gavin, but it was seeming more and more that Gavin just hated being ignored, because his usual reaction to Michael’s anger was just to _laugh_.

Which, on the one hand, it was good he hadn’t upset him again.

On the other hand, _motherfucker_.

“You _idiot!_ ” he whipped his headphones off his head. “You _disconnected the mouse!_ ”

Gavin was clutching his knee, which he’d apparently slammed on the underside of the desk when Slenderman showed up in the game, rocking a little, but mostly _laughing_. “My knee- I really banged it!”

Rage Quit was useful for situations like these- no one would fault him beating the table a little for content.

His hand barely ached when he did it too. That just fanned the flamed of his annoyance and he really had no idea why. Couldn’t think why. Couldn’t _think_.

Storming out of the room got laughter, which would’ve been great if it was for comedic effect. As it stood, it was just a really convenient smokescreen.

Doing a Rage Quit with Gavin had been his idea. Their dynamic seemed to go over well with the audience, and he was still wary of Gavin getting upset again.

But he’d been like this for the last week, since he woke up the day after finally coming out of the bedroom. Just pure irritation, for no decent reason. _Everything_ pissed him off. Every little noise, every mild inconvenience. Stuff that normally wouldn’t even _register_ made him want to _break_ something.

And that was honestly a little terrifying.

So far, he’d been able to control himself. But that was so far. He didn’t want to think he’d ever hurt any of the guys, didn’t want to think he was capable of that, but recent revelations made it clear he wasn’t capable of making that sort of call.

The fact that they were convinced he wouldn’t hurt them didn’t help. No one was watching for it, they were leaving themselves open. Which, honestly, only added to his anger levels. He wanted to yell at them about it, but he was pretty sure the only person who wouldn’t dismiss him out of hand would be Ryan, and even then, Ryan’s stance seemed to be ‘no hard feelings’, which was the opposite of helpful.

He shouldn’t _be_ here, he wasn’t _good_ , but, at the same time, he couldn’t make himself leave.

No matter how much he should.

 

* * *

 

 ** _MILES [4/22 6:37pm]:  
_** Everything okay, man? You seemed off today.

Michael stared blankly at the text as the most concentrated sense of rejection he’d ever felt settled over him.

The guys already knew he was fucked up. The last thing in the _world_ he needed was one of the few people who thought he was normal to start picking up on how _wrong_ that was.

 ** _TO: MILES [4/22 6:42pm]:_**  
I’m fine just not used to sitting around all day.

He bit down on the inside of his lip while he waited for the response which, thankfully, wasn’t long in coming.

 ** _MILES [4/22 6:44pm]:_**  
I know that ADHD feel. My mom used to throw me and my bro outside until we ran around enough to burn off the energy.

… huh.

 ** _TO: MILES [4/22 6:44pm]:_**  
That might be a good idea, actually.

 ** _MILES [4/22 6:45pm]:  
_** What

 ** _MILES [4/22 6:45pm]:  
_** Michael

 ** _MILES [4/22 6:45pm]:  
_** Michael, no.

 ** _MILES [4/22 6:45pm]:_**  
Choose life, Michael.

 ** _MILES [4/22 6:46pm]:  
_** RUNNING IS NEVER THE ANSWER

Michael smirked, shoved his phone into his pocket, and stood to leave the room.

Only Jack and Ray were around, which was a relief, because Michael was pretty sure Gavin would’ve wanted to join him.

“Going somewhere?” Jack asked, in a way he probably thought was casual.

Putting down his phone, which he’d been using to take a photo of him lacing up his shoes to send to Miles with the caption ‘brb’, he shrugged, going back to tying them on. “Bike ride. Gotta burn off _some_ of this fucking energy if I wanna get to sleep tonight.”

Jack actually looked a little relieved, shit. If he were hiding how fucked up he felt well enough, Jack shouldn’t have any reason to feel relieved. He was going to have to do better.

“You’re gonna fucking _exercise_? _Willingly_? You okay dude, you need to talk?”

Snorting, Michael stood before answering Ray, “It’s either that or beat my head against the wall until I’m unconscious and if I did _that_ , one of you fuckers would take to the hospital.” Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ , he shouldn’t have said that. “Lesser of the evils and shit.”

Ray wasn’t the only one who thought it was a bad idea, if the vibrating in his pocket was anything to go by. Well, at least he was going to have some entertainment when he got back.

 

* * *

 

Biking worked okay.

While he was riding around, and for a little while after, he felt a better. Almost normal. And the fact that he was dripping sweat and exhausted gave him a great excuse to just shower and go to sleep without having to talk to anybody.

But later, under the blankets, it didn’t help him sleep. Maybe it hadn’t been enough. Maybe he should’ve gone longer, started earlier. Because he couldn’t stop thinking, no matter how much he tried, he couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d done, that people _knew_ now.

Maggie at least had to suspect, and she’d always been great, but how could he know what might make her share the information she had because he’d pretty much given it to her in search of answers? It’d be the right thing to do, and she couldn’t _not_ wonder, right? And that Jenkins fuck, he definitely had suspicions, Michael was pretty sure the only reason he hadn’t been arrested was because there was no evidence.

But maybe that’s why they left, to lull him into a false sense of security while they _gathered_ any evidence to use against him, they wanted to make sure he stayed put, didn’t want to tip their hands to early and risk him running off-

And the _guys_.

Fuck, what if they found out? He’d known they didn’t get it, didn’t get the sort of person he was, when they’d started helping him, but this was _worse_ , fuck it was so much worse, if they found out, they’d regret getting involved with him, not figuring out more about his background before bringing him aboard, they’d _have_ to-

No, the guys weren’t like that, Ryan, at least, would understand, wouldn’t he? The situation, they couldn’t blame him, right, wouldn’t…?

But shouldn’t they? If it were him… but that wasn’t fair, he wasn’t them, they _should_ be more careful about themselves, each other, to guard themselves against people like him.

He wanted to _leave_ just cut and run before he could hurt them- before _they_ realized. He couldn’t handle that, couldn’t handle them realizing, he wanted to just _go_ , have them forget about him, so that could never happen.

Of course he wanted to stay, he wanted to do this work, thought he could do a good job. He could be, would _learn_ to be, anything they wanted him to, _needed_ him to. He could at least _try_. There was literally nothing else he’d rather do.

Fuck, that wasn’t _fair_ to them, they deserved to know who they’d brought in, didn’t they?

But… how would Ray and Gav look at him if they _knew_?

Around and around, the same damn thoughts, the same reasoning and logic never getting anywhere. He couldn’t _think_ about anything else, but he wanted to _so bad_.

Curling into a tight ball under the covers, he squeezed his eyes shut.

He wanted to _sleep_ , he wanted the sharp pains in his stomach to _stop_ , he wanted to not be so _mad_. So _scared_ , of things that might not ever happen.

Could he even fucking break this cycle?

 

* * *

 

Geoff kept shooting him looks.

Not mad, or even worried, really. Kind of annoyed, but more like something was irritating him because he couldn’t figure it out.

Michael knew the feeling.

He’d just gotten back from lunch with Miles, Kerry and Lindsay. Earlier, he’d made sure to talk with Gavin about random, not-work shit, so hopefully that wouldn’t make him feel all insecure again.

Usually, he liked nice, quiet afternoons of editing. Going through videos was fun, editing them just right was straightforward work.

But these days it just gave him too much time in his head.

He knew he was bouncing his leg like he’d downed seventeen Red Bulls, but he couldn’t help it. Sitting still just wasn’t going to happen right now.

Geoff couldn’t talk to him anyway, Ray and Jack were filming a video, so Michael was safe until that was over, at least. Or, failing at that, whenever Geoff figured out what was bothering him. Which, going from the past, could be in five minutes or three weeks, depending.

True to form, Geoff didn’t try and talk to him even after filming stopped. Whether that was because he didn’t know what to say or because of some semblance of professionalism holding him back, Michael was grateful.

Even more so a few hours later, when Ryan swung by to let them know he was headed back to the house.

“Cool, I’ll catch a ride back with you.” They’d both headed into the office early, so it should be fine.

“Sure,” Ryan got a knowing look on his face when Geoff looked up a bit sharply, “I’ve gotta run by the store, but I can drop you off first.”

“Sounds good.” Ryan practically having telepathy was a pain in the ass sometimes, but in moments like this, when Michael wasn’t the one on the receiving end of it? Convenient.

Plus, Ryan didn’t feel the need to talk as they drove. Not that this was new information, he hadn’t talked that very first night they’d driven together. It seemed like a million years ago now, and the circumstances had been pretty fucked, but still. It wasn’t like Ryan had broken the pattern.

After Ryan dropped him off, Michael wasted no time changing into shorts to go biking. It hadn’t been the greatest thing ever, but it had helped, and practically been necessary over the weekend, when he didn’t have work to distract himself.

The sooner he left, the more he could wear himself out before the guys got back. Plus, the sun was still up, so the heat would tire him out too.

Anything to zap some of this fucking swarm of bees under his skin.

Except it took all of a second, after wheeling the bike out into the driveway, for him to realize something was wrong. It wasn’t moving right.

A single look showed him the back tire was almost totally flat. Which was really just fucking great.

There was a bike pump in the corner of the garage, by Geoff and Gavin’s bikes, but all that did was make the tire make a hissing sound when he tried to pump air into it. Crouching, he could even feel the air leaking out through the rubber when he hovered his hand over it.

Something must’ve poked a hole in it when he rode it yesterday. Probably when he was almost back at the house, otherwise it would’ve gone flat while he was riding it.

This was really just fucking great. Burnie’d given him this goddamn bike and he already messed it up. He needed to fix it, to look up how to do that-

His hand was shaking.

He hadn’t noticed before, but holding it out, over the wheel, it was definitely shaking. No way was he sick, he'd eaten… had to be the energy buzzing under his skin. Too much, too much for working with his hands right now.

Couldn’t work on the bike with this much energy, couldn’t burn energy without the bike.

Fucking Catch-22.

He’d need to look up how to fix it, figure out what _exactly_ was wrong, go get supplies… yeah, there was no way, not right then.

But if he didn’t burn some of this energy, he was actually going to implode.

Well. Really only one thing to do for that.

Back in the house, he went to the guest room and rummaged around in the nightstand until he found the little white box his phone had come in. He hadn’t ever used them, but there was a pair of earbuds in it.

He didn’t have a whole lot of music on his phone, and what was there was Miles’s fault. Michael really didn’t care much one way or the other, but Miles had added a bunch of playlists to his phone, there had to be something good to move to in there.

So he walked out to the garage, put his bike back, went out into the sun, closed the garage door behind him, put in the earbuds, and set his music on shuffle.

And then he started running.


	49. Chapter 49

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, not dead, only busy
> 
> Shoutout to Eckham, who listened to me bitch about these chapters far more than a reasonable human could be expected to and gave really helpful advice. You're the real MVP

“A flat tire?” Well, at least Burnie didn’t sound angry. “There was probably something in the street you didn’t see. Could’ve been anything, really. Was it just a puncture?”

What the fuck could it be _other_ than something puncturing the tire?

“I don’t fucking know, I tried to reinflate it, but the air kept coming out. I could feel it, hear it, but couldn’t see where.”

“Probably just a puncture, then.” Burnie topped off his coffee mug and put the pot back in the machine. “Those are pretty easy to fix, I can show you. Should’ve thought to teach you before, really. Picked up a patch kit when we got you the helmet.”

Michael shook his head. He’d just told Burnie because he felt like he should, didn’t want to actually drag him into his problems. “I can look it up, don’t worry about it.”

“It’s no big deal-”

“I really got it, thanks.” He felt sorta shitty for blowing Burnie off like that, but there were only so many times you could refuse help before you were the one who started looking like the asshole. Better to bail early than too late.

“Well hang on a sec, I wanted to ask you about something.”

Aw shit.

Reluctantly, he turned back, but Burnie didn’t look too serious, so maybe it wasn’t bad?

Burnie didn’t even look up from adding milk to his coffee. “Did you have a particular challenge in mind for the next RT Life video?”

Oh. He hadn’t thought about that in a while.

“Uh, I had a list.” It was in the little notebook, back at the guys’ house, but he couldn’t remember exactly what was in there.

“Cool, why don’t you pick some of those and we’ll figure out what to do next and when? Might not be for a week or two, I know there’s a bit of a backlog, but I’ll let you know.”

“Sure, sounds good.”

After waiting for a sec to see if Burnie was going to come up with anything else, Michael fled quietly to the Achievement Hunter office.

He grimaced as he sat down at his desk. Running worked pretty well, better than biking, for sure. It didn’t fix the problem, he’d still spent way too long in a miserable ball in bed before managing sleep last night, but still.

Running exhausted his whole body. Made him too tired to think, for a while.

But it also made his legs sore as _shit_.

He hadn’t expected that. He’d been on his feet so much back in Jersey, it had never even crossed his mind that he could get sore from _running_.

At least it wasn’t really bad unless he was actively sitting down or getting up. He was pretty sure Jack, at least, had picked up on it, but Jack was also in a weirdly good mood, so Michael was pretty sure he could get away without being called out on it, at least today.

Or he thought so, until he went into the support room to fork over some footage and Lindsay got a good look at him.

“Please tell me you at least stretched first,” she said, completely out of left field.

After a quick glance to make sure there wasn’t someone _behind_ him she was really talking to, he settled for giving her a blank stare. “What?”

“You’re moving like you’re stiff. Sore. Looks like you ran a lot,” she explained, slowly. “So is it just normal aches because you did too much at once, like an idiot, or did you pull something because you didn’t stretch, like a fucking moron?”

“Either way, I’m fucking stupid, right?”

“You catch on quick.” She tapped her thumbnail on her desk as she looked him over. “Moving more will actually help the lactic acid build-up, if you didn’t pull anything. The more you stay still, the worse it’ll get.”

“I think I’m good,” he tried to deflect, setting the hard drive on her desk.

“Oh yeah?” she didn’t seem like she was going to let this go, fuck. “Do a lunge.”

“ _What_?”

“A. Lunge. If you can do a decent one, you’re better off than you look. If not? You _really_ need to learn some stretches.”

He stared blankly at her a little longer, then looked over at Kerry, who held up his hands and turned back to his computer screen. Traitor.

There was a vague memory of how lunges worked in the back of his mind, from PE. He only remembered doing them once or twice, but he knew the general concept.

So he did one, and it fucking _hurt_ , it felt like the tops of his thighs were on _fire_ , holy shit.

Pain wasn’t hard to hide, though, so he held the pose and raised an eyebrow at Lindsay. “Satisfied?”

“Not even close.” She stood, walking over. “Your leg needs to be parallel to the ground.”

She put one hand on his shoulder and pushed _down_ and that was the end of that.

“Mother _fucker_.” He reached out a hand and managed to brace himself against the floor before he could fall over. “What’s your _problem_?”

“I don’t have a problem, but _you_ are going to have a pulled hamstring if you don’t learn some fucking stretches.”

“Fine, I’ll Google it, happy?”

“Google’s not going to tell you if your lunges suck shit. Come on,” she grabbed his arm and towed him in the direction of the door, and he was so surprised he let her.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. That was the worst stretch I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh shut the fuck up.”

 

* * *

 

It felt like his _muscles_ were quivering by the time Lindsay was done with him, but they also didn’t feel nearly as stiff. Not that he’d ever tell her that, but she probably knew, if her smug grin was anything to go by.

He wished his body wasn’t so tired. His heart still raced, his stomach still clenched, even when he wasn’t actively thinking about… everything. Which didn’t make any goddamn _sense_ , but nothing had made sense since he met Ray, so why the fuck not?

Trying to ignore the rest of it, he looked out the car window, focusing on the glass against his cheek, the random twitches of his leg.

Now if only Jack would stop looking at him out of the corner of his eye.

Maybe driving back to the house with just Jack and Geoff hadn’t been the smartest thing, but he’d been so behind, what with Lindsay kidnapping him and all, that he’d been too busy to notice the others leaving.

He was definitely regretting that now.

For most of the drive, it was a toss-up whether anything was _actually_ going to be said, but Jack finally cleared his throat and tried, obviously going for casual and missing the mark by a mile, “You seem a little better today.”

And _there_ was the sharp pain in his gut, the pounding of his heart. His skin going hot. Sweat breaking out on his hairline.

He hadn’t even moved, but god, he wanted to.

It wasn’t _fair_ , he was trying to be better, honestly was, but every roundabout mention of things had him feeling like his guts were being ripped out, caffeine being injected directly into his heart.

He wanted a time machine. He wanted to stop feeling hunted. He wanted to go back to the life he had before Burnie came and told him cops wanted to see him.

He wanted to remember what life was like before this.

He made a humming noise and turned a little more toward the window, watching Jack’s shoulders slump out of the corner of his eye and hating himself a little. But really, what could he do?

Maybe he was sore and tired, but there was no way he could just sit around after that. They got back to the house and he was out the door again in under two minutes, pounding the pavement under his shoes.

It hurt like hell, but apparently it’d stop hurting eventually. That was what Lindsay had said. That moving more was good for him. Even if it wasn’t true, it was going to be his excuse.

He couldn’t even say he liked running, really. It kind of sucked, the heat, the sweat, never feeling like he was getting enough air. But he liked what it did for him, emptying out his mind, giving him an excuse to explore the neighborhood, start building a map in his head.

For way too long, he hadn’t known anything about the area where he was staying. That was just _wrong_ , it would’ve killed him, back in Jersey. He should’ve learned more about where he was living months ago.

Fuck. It _had_ been months. He’d been staying with the guys for _months_ , and he was still this fucked up, sorry excuse for a human, who wouldn’t know normal if it bit him in the ass.

He literally had more than he could’ve ever dreamed of having, but he didn’t know what to _do_ with it, felt like it’d all shatter around him if he so much as tried to touch it.

Then again, it was all kind of shattering anyway, no matter how much he tried to keep his hands to himself.

Sure, he still _had_ everything, but how long could that last?

Burnie’d said he’d get him a lawyer before even hearing what the problem was, but there was no way someone like him could be associated with Rooster Teeth, that was too much, wasn’t it? He couldn’t ask them to shield him from this.

It was only a matter of time, really. Nothing stayed hidden forever. Especially when you were in the spotlight. Especially on the _internet_.

One bad thing about not having the bike anymore was that he didn’t have the water bottle bolted to it.

 _Fuck_. Everything took so much more _energy_ in this heat. The sun may have been setting, but it wasn’t really cooling down any.

Hot, humid air rasped down his throat, drying out his mouth and making him cough. Slowing up, he put his hands on his knees and let himself just _breathe_ for a second, trying to move past the trembling of his legs, the stitch in his side.

Sweat drops slowly slid down his forehead, making him squeeze his eyes shut to keep them out. What was the phrase? ‘Sweating bullets’? He always thought it was an exaggeration, but it definitely felt like he was losing that much water at least.

No wonder everyone was always talking about drinking enough water.

At first, he didn’t even noticed when the air around his hand sniffled a little, but he _definitely_ fucking noticed something wet and slimy dragging over it and his knee.

He jumped about four feet back on reflex, eyes flying open, and nearly kneed a raggedy-looking golden retriever in the face.

For it’s part, the dog just panted at him and wagged its tail. When he just stared at it, it sat, but kept wagging its tail.

They were in an empty lot near two major streets and this dog had a collar, didn’t look thin. It might not have been groomed well, but it wasn’t a stray, he’d seen plenty of those, so what the fuck was it doing so close to traffic? Had it gotten out of somebody’s backyard?

Eventually, he crouched down in front of it, scratching it behind the ears with one hand while he checked the tag with the other.

“Dandylion.” The dog perked up a little at that, wagging its tail harder. “Okay, so you either belong to someone who thinks that’s funny, someone who’s shit at spelling, or small children.” Or any combination, really.

The dog licked his cheek and he resisted the urge to sigh and pulled out his phone. It squirmed, kept trying to shove its head back under Michael’s hand when he let do to put the number from the tag into his phone, but Michael managed to get it in eventually… only for it to go straight to voicemail.

“’This person’s voice mail box has not been set up yet’…” he mocked under his breath, shoving his phone back in his pocket and trying to decide what to do.

He’d been trying to learn as much as he could about the area, he recognized the street name engraved into the tag. It wasn’t far, he was pretty sure he could find it. Even if no one was home, he could stick the dog in the backyard and it should be fine. At least it wouldn’t get hit by a car.

Straightening from his crouch and ignoring the pained complaints from his muscles, he hooked his fingers under the dog’s collar. “Alright, let’s go.”

For its part, the dog seemed perfectly happy to trot alongside him for several blocks. Clearly, it didn’t give a shit where they were going. Part of him thought it might be funny to just show up back at the guys’ house with a dog and tell them it followed him home.

There was no way in hell he’d actually _do_ it, but it was fun to imagine. Jack would want to take it in immediately and give it a bath and feed it, no question. Gavin, hmm, he wasn’t sure, Gavin seemed like the sort of person who’d either love dogs or be scared of them, actually. He couldn’t really see Ryan or Ray being either for or against it. Geoff might try and be the responsible adult about the whole thing and wasn’t _that_ hilarious to think about?

He was nearly to the street on the dogs tag when they passed through a park. There were some children playing on a kind of pathetic playground, and a couple of guys sitting at a picnic table a ways away, under the shade.

On the wooden table was a leash that matched the dog’s collar.

“Hey,” he called as he walked up, nodding his head at the dog, who happily walked over to the table when he let the collar slip from his fingers, “this yours?”

One of the men was rougher-looking, tattoos on his arms and neck that looked like gang or prison tatts, though Michael didn’t recognize any of them in particular, he knew the general look. Weird how some tattoos, like Geoff’s, he liked looking at, and some just made him antsy, like this guys’.

He looked up, obviously bored, glanced at the dog, and lazily said, “Oh yeah, guess he must’ve wandered off.”

The rush of annoyance that flared in his chest caught Michael a little off guard. “Yeah, he was five blocks over, nearly wandered onto the fucking highway.”

Both guys looked just vaguely similar enough around the face that he figured they were probably related, though the second one was missing all the incriminating tattoos and immediately clipped the dog’s leach back on after hearing Michael’s words.

The first guy, though, just grunted and reached into the cooler at their feet, taking out a cold beer and twisting the cap off. “Lucky you found him when you did.”

Between the heat, the visible lack of fucks the they guy had to give, the juice pouches and soda he could see in the cooler, and the strain from the entire day, Michael didn’t think he could be blamed for looking over at the playground and muttering, “Really fucking hope you’re not supposed to be looking out for any of them- sure don’t want to see that tragedy on the news later.”

And, oh boy, did _that_ get a reaction.

Rough-looking guy slammed his hands down on the table, nearly knocking his beer over, and started to stand up. His… brother? Cousin? Grabbed his arm and hissed, “Don’t do it man, you just got out. Your parole officer-” but the other guy shook off his hand before he could finish.

And stalked right up to Michael.

“The _fuck_ did you say??”

Thinking about it, Michael should’ve been… scared. Wary, at least. But he’d dealt with a million guys like this before. Taller than him, bigger than him. Expecting that and a loud voice to be enough to make him cower.

He didn’t really feel the heat anymore, hear cars driving by. Everything was still and quiet.

“You heard me.”

The guy’s hands slammed into his shoulders in a harsh shove, pushing him back a step. Muggy beer-breath wafted over his face.

Every movement was muscle memory. Stepping back, shifting his weight, lunging forward. Making contact.

His hand hurt.

Michael was still standing, but the other guy was pushing himself to his hands and knees from the grass under his feet, his buddy scrambling over to grab onto his shoulder- either to help him or hold him back, Michael wasn’t really sure.

“Stop it,” he sounded _pissed_ , glaring at both the rough guy and Michael.

The two words were loaded, and for a second it didn’t seem like the first guy was going to listen to him, but then his body language shifted, slumping a little. Letting Michael feel like he could slowly back away, then leave.

Adrenaline was singing in his veins still, his knuckles were red, and there were a couple drops of blood on the back of his hand.

Mechanically, he walked over to a dinky water fountain in the park and washed the blood off.

It wasn’t until he was staring at the clear liquid running over his hand that he realized it wasn’t shaking anymore.

His hand wasn’t shaking and his mind was clear. Calm.

… oh.

Oh _yes_.


	50. Chapter 50

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (insert champagne popper emoji)

In his defense, it wasn’t like he did it _all_ the time.

He _also_ didn’t go out intentionally looking for fights.

But if the wasps under his skin started getting too bad, and he started catching Jack looking at him with concern, and he happened to go for a run, and happened to run into a volatile situation completely by accident? Well, that was just coincidence.

It had only been a couple weeks, but things were mostly back to normal. Or, well. He could pretend, anyway. He thought he was faking it okay. The guys had mostly relaxed and stopped looking at him like he was going to shatter to pieces at any second.

Well, except Ryan, but Michael was pretty sure Ryan was always going to know when he was up to shit. And Ryan never called him on anything anyway, not so far, at least. And Michael never tried to put on an innocent act around him, so it kind of evened out.

He didn’t get away scot-free every time. But, so far, nobody had gotten a hit on his face, and he could wear long sleeves, sometimes, or jackets. Not a big deal, no one really seemed to think to bother him about it.

So it was all fine.

He wasn’t exactly _better_. But he was better than he was. He could even forget about things for a couple hours, sometimes. Those were pretty great, before he remembered.

And shit also distracted him better than it did before. Like Burnie wanting him to do an eating challenge that wasn’t just going to be a video, but that was going to be _livestreamed_ for the fucking _sponsors_.

“Are you fucking insane?”

Burnie ignored that, they were all getting pretty used to that question, actually, which was all the more proof they really _were_ fucking insane. “It’s not like you have to do anything different than you already do.”

Michael just gave him a blank stare because, yeah, it actually was, but also? The whole idea was just fucking stupid.

“You’re going to have one of the perks for people who pay you be watching me eat a massive gummy bear in real time? Who the fuck thought this was a good idea?”

“The _sponsors_ did. We took a poll.”

Jesus fucking Christ.

Michael didn’t have much of a choice but to throw his hands up at that, which Burnie took as agreement, because of course he fucking did.

 

* * *

 

Throwing up a pound and a half of gummy bear was, it turned out, way less fucking annoying than actually eating it.

And he hadn’t even been able to _finish_ the damn thing, that was what pissed him off.

It’d been a whole fucking thing. Ray and Gavin had stayed to join him on the stream, and Burnie had been there, of course. Matt had even swung by, for a bit, to calmly berate his life choices, which, hey, about time _someone_ did.

Michael’d known he wasn’t going to make it through the whole thing before getting to the end, and Burnie had _not_ been happy with him for still eating even after that. But he’d finished the head and not gone out like a bitch, so there was at least that.

And it was nearly an hour before he got to that point, he’d gotten to spend some time to make Gav happy, and Ray had seemed a little more relaxed. Michael hadn’t even noticed him getting tense lately, but he noticed when it was gone. He needed to pay more attention.

Then came the puking, which Gavin filmed because Gavin filmed everything. If Gavin could get cameras fucking surgically embedded into his eyes, he totally fucking would. And this was apparently going to be turned into a video anyway, so why not, right?

But it’d be a good video for the sponsors who couldn’t make the stream, so that was really all that mattered.

It didn’t take too long to help break down the stream setup. Geoff had stayed behind to drive them back and talk to Gus about something. There was no cookout tonight, so the stream had sort of served the purpose of the Friday night hangout in its place.

Still, Michael didn’t want to hold them up any longer than necessary, but he had a half finished Rage Quit he wanted to work on over the weekend. If he could grab the files he needed off his computer quickly, they wouldn’t have to wait on him to leave.

The Achievement Hunter office was kind of nice in the evening. The light wasn’t on when he walked in, so he could only see by the fading sunlight through the window. It was still plenty to see by, so he didn’t bother turning on the light. Besides, the dim light and the quiet of the room was sort of peaceful. As much as a room that was usually full of loud idiots could be.

He couldn’t find any USB drives on his desk, though. Which wasn’t a huge surprise, who owned which drive wasn’t something people payed a whole lot of attention to, unless something needed to be deleted. Grabbing any drive that wasn’t actually plugged into a computer was pretty normal.

The main drive-stealing culprits were generally Gavin and Geoff. Gavin, because he had video files coming out his ass, most days. And Geoff, because he’d take drives and then completely forget about them.

So Michael wandered over to Geoff’s desk first, since any USB drives he could find there wouldn’t already be packed full of footage, or audio, or whatever. His desk also wasn’t a biohazard zone. Geoff didn’t necessarily keep his desk _neat_ , but it was cleaner than Gavin’s, and it was really fucking sad that that was a standard.

There wasn’t a drive anywhere on top of it, so he opened the top drawer on the side- and froze.

His own face stared up at him from on top of the rest of the random bullshit in the drawer. It wasn’t smiling, and it was no wonder, since he was pretty sure he’d been eleven or twelve when the damn thing was taken, and not happy about it either.

Weirdly enough, he remembered that day. School pictures, mandatory for some stupid reason, even if you weren’t getting copies yourself. And he sure as shit wasn’t.

The photographer had put in a token effort to get him to smile, but had given up pretty quick, since he hadn’t been able to put on anything convincing. Probably figured it was better to have a blank stare in the yearbook than a grimacing kid.

Even the bruise on his neck was there. In the picture, it looked almost like a shadow, peeking out of his collar but he remembered how it got there, remembered how dark it’d gotten.

He didn’t realize he could remember all of that.

Reaching out, he picked the picture up to look closer. His hand was shaking, so he held onto it with both, which helped less than it should have.

It wasn’t a _real_ picture. Just printed on regular paper and laminated. The edges were soft and worn, and it looked sort of faded. Like it’d been handled a lot, or a little, over a long time.

He didn’t realize how long he’d been standing there until the door opened.

“Hey Michael, you in-”

Geoff stopped midsentence, but it still took a few seconds for Michael to tear his eyes away from the picture to look at him.

It had gotten darker, but Geoff’s hand was frozen on the light switch. Michael could only really see him by the light pouring in through the door, but he looked pale and… not scared. Alarmed, maybe. By what he was seeing.

And he fucking _should be_.

“Where,” he snarled, holding up the picture, “did you _get this_?”

“Michael-”

“Fucking _where, Geoff?!_ ”

Geoff looked stressed for a second, then pained, then he sighed. “Back when those cops were here. The detective gave me that before leaving.”

There was no way that was all there was to the story, but it was already too much.

Geoff knew. He _knew_.

Maybe not what Michael had done, but that there’d been cops. That they’d wanted to talk to him. That Michael had lost his shit after. And who knew what _they’d_ told him? What he was thinking about what Michael may have done?

Who _else_ knew? Who else did they talk to when they talked to Geoff?

Oh fuck… what if Gavin and Ray were there? What if _they_ knew he was being investigated?

And on _top_ of that, this fucking picture… if Geoff hadn’t thought he was pathetic before, he sure as shit did now. Even having been the kid in the picture, Michael could see it from his perspective. It was a tossup whether he’d noticed the bruise or not, but there was no way the expression had passed him by. That there was clearly something wrong with this kid.

God, he was so _fucked_.

“Michael-”

No way could he talk to Geoff right now. Fuck, he couldn’t get in a _car_ with them and drive back to their house. And there was no way in hell Geoff would let them _not_ talk about this.

He was going to have to move fast.

So he did, brushed past Geoff, tossing the picture in a nearby trash can when he did. Made a beeline for the door to the parking lot.

“Michael-!”

He was gone before he could hear the rest of it, running.

Running in jeans _sucked_ , and getting back to the house later was going to be a fucking nightmare, but he needed to not be in any enclosed spaces with people hovering and worrying at him.

For a while, he ran without thinking. Just one foot in front of the other, because he had no idea what he was thinking, feeling, only that he needed to _move_.

After the first half hour, he stopped worrying that Geoff was going to pull up next to him in a car, so he slowed up a bit. But he kept jogging, sometimes breaking out into a run when he started feeling shit again.

He didn’t know _what_ he was feeling. Mostly scared, because Geoff had to at least have an inkling that there was a real possibility Michael had done something seriously fucked up. And Michael had acted guilty as _fuck_ after those cops left, so that would’ve pretty much confirmed it. He’d been fighting so long for them to see him as _normal_ , as someone that was just another one of their friends, but that wasn’t going to happen.

Honestly, he’d known that for a long time, he was just too fucked up, had been fucked up around them too much, there was no way they’d ever just see him without thinking of all that shit. No matter what he tried, he could never have that.

And he was also fucking _pissed_ about the picture. He wasn’t sure why, but he was. Maybe because it just reinforced it all so much. All that ‘oh poor Michael’ bullshit. Sure, things had been shitty, but he wasn’t some helpless, broken kid anymore. He’d made it _out_ , he’d _survived_. If someone looked at him like he was a victim one more time, he was going to lose his shit.

Of course. Storming out of the office after yelling at Geoff definitely hadn’t _helped_.

Gradually slowing to a walk, he tried not to make it too obvious that it felt like he was dying. He was in a not-unfamiliar area, closer to downtown and campus than most of the other places he’d run. Usually, he avoided busier places, for the reason that the people who were walking past him right now were giving him the side-eye. Though, to be fair, he probably looked a little insane. No one who was just out for a little exercise wore jeans.

He was going to have to go back to the house eventually. Even if he wanted to run, he didn’t have any of his shit. If he was even going to consider cutting his losses before it could get worse, he needed his backpack at least.

Going back was gonna suck. But it wasn’t fair to the guys to stay away too long. Maybe he could get away with a night or two, it was the weekend, after all. But Geoff and Jack, at least, jumped to the worst conclusions imaginable, usually, so maybe not.

And, fuck, did he need to apologize to Geoff? He wasn’t sure. Geoff had hidden it from him, but technically hadn’t done anything _wrong_?

Goddammit, it was all fucked up.

The fact that he didn’t notice the guy lurking in the mouthway of the alley until he was grabbed was really his own damn fault. The amount of things he’d done in Austin that would’ve gotten him killed in Jersey was just getting embarrassing.

“Gimme your wallet and your phone.”

There was something thin and cylindrical poking him in the ribs and all he wanted to do in the world was roll his eyes.

This fight, he _really_ hadn’t gone looking for.


	51. Chapter 51

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #RIPMySleepSchedule

Well, this sucked.

Groaning in frustration, he limped along on the sidewalk.

It was going to take him a fucking age to get back to the house, at this rate.

He had never been more embarrassed in his life. On the one hand, for getting grabbed in the first place. But then, to add insult to injury, the guy wasn’t even a decent mugger. The ‘gun’ he’d tried to threaten Michael with had been his own finger, hidden in the pocket of his jacket. Like Michael wouldn’t know what the barrel of a gun felt like.

On top of that, the dude had been _on_ something, he’d had some serious crazy eyes going on. It’d been almost embarrassingly easy to throw him off and kick his ass a little. He was lucky the guy hadn’t been on PCP or something.

And _then_ , of course, some wannabe hero had chanced by the alley and seen them and thought _Michael_ was the mugger, which wouldn’t have been a big deal if the guy hadn’t been six two and built like a refrigerator.

Michael’d taken most of a hit to the jaw and had tried to catch himself against the brick wall of the nearest building and wound up accidentally cracking his head against it instead.

Then the _actual_ mugger had taken off and Michael was just so incredibly done that, when the wannabe-hero started to advance on him again, he’d kicked him in the dick.

Kind of an asshole move, but, eh. At least that way, he didn’t have to run to lose the guy.

But now half his face was covered in blood because head injuries just _did_ that, and it’d dripped onto his shirt, and he wasn’t optimistic enough to think his face wasn’t already bruising.

Today sucked ass.

That absolutely shitshow of a fight would’ve been bad enough on it’s own, but now that it’d happened, he could think straight again, and-

Ugh.

He was a jackass.

Yeah, he was scared. And pissed, for reasons he didn’t really understand. But _running out of the building_ after he found the picture? It was like he was in a damn teen romcom.

He’d been obviously off for weeks now. Hadn’t been able to focus on anything except the constant low-level screaming of every bad thing that could possibly go wrong in the back of his mind.

And he’d just let the guys be worried about it. He’d been faking okay, but not well enough.

Everything was just so much _clearer_ after a little brawl and some bloodloss.

He wasn’t some idiot kid who couldn’t deal with their own emotions. Already, he’d thought of about a million better ways he could’ve handled talking to Geoff that _didn’t_ involve bolting from the property.

It was just humiliating. The only reason he was shuffling back to the house instead of going to hide at Miles’s place was because he was covered in blood. Miles didn’t need that shit and, hopefully, by the time he got back to the house, the guys would’ve gone to sleep. Then he’d have time to get clean and come up with at least a semi believable excuse.

Not that they’d believe him.

Well, they might. They’d believed him about the slipping in the shower thing. But that had been mostly true.

Technically, he’d fallen this time too, but he could just _see_ the disappointed look Jack would give him at what he’d see as a lie.

And to wrap it all up with a nice little shitstained bow, he was limping. His leg hadn’t gotten hurt at all in the fight, but his knee felt a lot like it did when he’d landed wrong back in the alley where he first met Ryan. Maybe he’d pulled something? If he’d messed something up by not stretching, Lindsay would never let him live it down.

So. He was shambling down the sidewalk, covered in blood, like an extra in a zombie movie. He’d had a visible explosion at work, in front of his boss, after being distant and moody for weeks. Who knew what Geoff had told Ray and Gavin when he hadn’t been there to go back to the house with them?

Everything had kind of gone to shit.

When his stomach let out a sad, high pitched gurgle, he tacked on an extra turd to the shitlist- he’d puked up the gummi bear and hadn’t had anything to eat after that.

Huh. Maybe that was why he was so tired, not the bloodloss. He _had_ run a lot.

At least he was nearly back to the house. He was honestly a little surprised no one had called the cops on him, especially once he reached more residential areas, but hey, he’d take what he could fucking get.

Rounding the corner, he could see the house down the street. One of the lights was on, obvious through the window, but it looked like the kitchen light. It wasn’t great that someone was still awake, but maybe most of them had gone to sleep? One or two, he could probably handle, as long as they weren’t Ray or Gavin. He wouldn’t even know where to start explaining himself to them.

No matter who it was, though, he knew he couldn’t walk in looking like he did. Going around the side of the house, he found the yard faucet and cranked it on.

He couldn’t see too well, but he did his best to wash off his face and hands, rinse his hair some. His shirt was black, so maybe any blood on it would just look like the rest of the water drops? Worth a shot, anyway.

Walking up to the garage, he pulled out his phone, went to turn it on, and scowled when it stayed dark. It should’ve still been charged from the night before, he didn’t know why it wouldn’t-

Oh, he’d opened up the camera to get another angle for the video, but he’d forgotten about it. If it had stayed open, and the screen didn’t turn off, that would drain it fast.

Well, shit. That explained the conspicuous lack of phone calls.

He could just explain in the morning, though. It helped that, for this, he actually had a genuine excuse.

At least he’d memorized the garage code, the last thing he needed would be having to go up and ring the doorbell.

The garage door seemed deafening in the silent street, but Michael knew for a fact that you could barely hear it inside. Ideally, everyone would be on the other side of the house and he could make it to the guest room without running into anyone.

So, of course, he’d barely made it to the back door and started reaching for the knob when it was wrenched open to reveal Ray standing there.

Ray’s eyes were wide behind his glasses and he looked like- like he’d been running or something. He was breathing heavily and looked wrung out, but he wasn’t really sweaty or flushed like he’d been exercising? Weird.

With the hand that didn’t have an apparent death grip on the doorknob, Ray had a phone pressed against his ear. In the silence of Michael standing there awkwardly and Ray standing there frozen, Michael could make out a familiar voice on the other line, but he couldn’t quite tell who it was or what they were saying.

“I’ve got him,” Ray finally said. “He’s here.” Then he flipped on the garage light and- yup, his eyes went wide, that was all Michael needed to know he hadn’t managed to get all the blood off. “Holy fuck, dude, what happened to you?”

Even though he’d asked, Ray didn’t give him time to actually answer, grabbing his wrist and pulling him inside. Down the hall, past the dark, empty living room, into the light of the kitchen.

Michael wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but a still, silent house wasn’t it. He’d hoped people would be asleep, but the quiet was empty, not just dormant.

“Where the fuck _is_ everyone?” he asked without thinking. Ray shot him a look, even though he was obviously still listening to someone on his phone.

“Looking for _you_ , dumbass.”

Michael hadn’t thought he could feel any more like an overdramatic piece of shit, but apparently the day was just full of surprises.

Ray hadn’t let go of his arm, sharp fingers digging into his skin, like he thought Michael might try to run away.

Everyone else would forgive him, probably, but Ray…

“My fucking phone died,” he blurted out. Fumbling with his free hand, he got his phone out and clicked it, so it would show the battery alert. “I didn’t notice. I wasn’t running.”

The look Ray gave him was beyond skeptical, but, as he talked, it gradually softened a bit. Still pissed, for sure, but not furious. It was a start, at least.

He let go of Michael’s arm and turned, walking back down the hall, toward the garage.

Michael stood there for a second, not sure what to do, then decided to take advantage of being left alone.

He could see a lot better in the kitchen light, the smears of blood on his hands from trying to rub it off his face, pale pink stains on the paper towels after he buried his face in them. The cut on his forehead felt like it was oozing a little, but it wasn’t gushing like it had been, so he just hoped his hair could hide it.

“Alright.” Michael jumped nearly a foot at the sound of Ryan’s voice, whirling around to see the taller man making a beeline toward him. When had he gotten back to the house? “Let’s see the damage.”

And then, without waiting for Michael to so much as process the fact that he was suddenly _there_ , crowding him back against the kitchen counter, Ryan bent slightly, grabbed the backs of Michael’s knees, and _lifted_.

“ _Shit!_ ” Michael spat on reflex, immediately dropping the crumpled paper towel he’d been using to dry his hands in favor of grabbing onto Ryan’s shirt out of sheer panic that he’d fall.

Ryan didn’t drop him, though, didn’t even seem to notice that Michael was nearly ripping the fabric of his shirt, or maybe he just didn’t care. He set him down on the countertop, like it was just that easy, so they were practically eye to eye.

It had been a while now since Michael had flinched away from something he saw coming, and he was proud of that, but when he saw Ryan’s hand coming for his face, he couldn’t help pulling back, squeezing his eyes shut out of reflex.

Only a second passed between him pulling away and a cold hand landing on the skin where his jaw met his neck. Well, at least the flinch apparently hadn’t bothered Ryan any. If he could feel Michael’s pulse under his hand, though, there was no way he wouldn’t think Michael was having some kind of heart attack.

He forced himself to relax a little, let Ryan tilt his face toward the overhead light.

“Red, but not bruising.” A thumb brushed along his jawline with just a bit of pressure, and he jumped a little when it pressed against a tender spot where he’d caught most of the punch. “Not yet, anyway.”

Cracking his eyes open, Michael half-heartedly glared down at Ryan’s critical expression. “Are you done?”

Ryan’s eyes were holy-shit blue and just made the look he gave Michael that much more sarcastic. “Are _you_?”

Michael opened his mouth. Closed it. Let Ryan tilt his head back down and push his hair away from his forehead, though he had to curl his fingers around the lip of the countertop and lock them in place to manage it.

Ha, Ryan looked confused. Poor fucking know-it-all.

“Did you take a header into the sidewalk?” Ryan guessed, squinting at his hairline.

“Brick wall.”

Ryan let him pull back, but didn’t back off himself. “How’d you manage that?”

Michael shrugged. “Lost my balance.”

Technically that was true, but Ryan did _not_ look impressed.

At first, Michael didn’t realize what was happening when Ryan grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled- the thin fabric stretching enough to bare his shoulder- but then he caught the green-yellow of a half-healed bruise out of the corner of his eye.

“You’ve lost your balance a lot in the last couple weeks, haven’t you?”

Well, shit. There weren’t really a lot of ways Michael could respond to that, so he settled for avoiding eye contact, glaring at the cabinet to his right and tightening his grip on the counter.

It wasn’t like he’d done anything _wrong_. He knew the guys wouldn’t like it, but when it came down to it, whatever he had to do to handle things without exploding at one of them was fine. Fighting worked, that was all there was to it.

Soft footsteps started coming toward them and a surge of panic shot through Michael’s blood when he realized Ryan hadn’t let go of his shirt- that the bruise was still completely visible and obviously not fresh.

Ryan’s hand didn’t budge when Michael gripped his wrist and pulled, and his expression, when Michael finally looked at him, was expectant.

What was he expecting? An apology? An explanation? He wasn’t going to get either of those things, but _no one_ else could see that bruise.

“ _Rye_ ,” he hissed under his breath, tugging on Ryan’s wrist again, “ _come_ _on_.”

Still not moving, Ryan met his eyes dead on. It looked like he was searching for something in Michael’s face, scanning for some bit of information that was going to make the decision for him.

At the last second, he pulled the collar of Michael’s shirt back into place sharply and stepped back, just as Ray rounded the corner.

“They on their way back?” Ryan’s voice was so calm, like the last couple minutes hadn’t happened at all.

“Yeah, gonna take a while, they were still over by the office.” Ray finally looked over toward Michael, making him belatedly realize he was still sitting on the counter and quickly jump down. “Do we need the first aid kit?”

“No.” Michael said quickly, getting two creepily similar looks of sardonic skepticism before hurrying on. “I just hit my head- it’s not a big deal, heads bleed like fucking crazy.”

Still, Ray didn’t move, looking over at Ryan, who crossed his arms and shrugged with a reluctant, “He’s right.”

Michael had no idea why Ryan was holding back, but that was something to freak out about later. “I’m going to go clean up so I don’t give Jack a fucking heart attack.”

“We’d appreciate that,” Ryan said drily, but neither he or Ray move to stop him, so he made for the guest room as fast as he could without running or making his limp too obvious.

Shutting and locking the door behind him, he stripped off his blood spattered clothes as quickly as he could, heading right for the shower. A quick look in the mirror proved it- he looked almost as bad as he did that first fucking day he let Ryan take him back to the hotel. He’d cleaned the blood off his face, but it was still in his hair, and there was some on his neck that he’d missed.

He took the fastest shower of his life, but made sure there was no red or pink in the water at all before shutting it off.

After drying his face and hair as much as he could, combed his hair back with a hand, and leaned close to the mirror to see what he was working with.

It was obvious how Ryan had known he’d hit his head on something rough- the main problem was where the skin had spilt on impact, but it was scraped up around that too. There really wasn’t any other reason it would look like that.

The split was still oozing a little, so Michael opened up the cabinet under the sink and reached far in the back- where he kept his small hoard of medical supplies.

Honestly, the cut wasn’t bad enough for butterfly stitches, but that was the most subtle way for him to bandage it. His hair would cover it fine, but if it was still bleeding, it’d run down his face. He didn’t have the time to stop the bleeding right then, the guys would be back soon if they’d only been at the office.

The shaking was back in his hands, but, at least at the moment, he knew it had more to do with nerves about facing the guys than it did anything else.

Fuck, it would’ve been bad enough to get back a little roughed up _without_ knowing that he’d apparently thrown them into a panic by being gone so long and not answering his phone. Or, well, his phone going straight to voicemail, which was even _more_ damning.

Sighing, he stopped poking at the single white strip holding the cut closed and shut his eyes, leaning forward to press his forehead against the damp, fogged glass of the mirror.

He still wasn’t happy Geoff had had the picture. But then, what else could he have done with it? No way in a million years would Geoff have thrown something like that in the trash. And it wasn’t like he’d fucking framed it or anything. It’d just been sitting in his drawer.

And then Michael freaked out on him for it.

Knocking his head against the glass, he sighed heavily. Only one thing to do now.

Heading back out into the guest room, he rummaged through the closet until he found a long-sleeved shirt that was still a little big on him, then pulled it and some sweat pants on. Nothing really screamed ‘I fucking swear I wasn’t just in a fight’ like pajamas and wet hair.

The hardwood of the hallway was cold against his bare feet, but that was okay. It had been so hot outside, the cold was actually comfortable.

He’d managed to get back out before the others got back, which was good. Ryan was at the kitchen counter making a sandwich and Ray was sitting on the island with his arm buried to the elbow in a full family-sized bag of Doritos.

Michael had no idea what it was about that that made him feel a little better, but he wasn’t going to question it right then.

He tried to think of something to say before the silence could get awkward, as he walked over to take a seat at the island next to Ray, but Ryan beat him to it.

“Want one?” he asked, gesturing to his half-constructed monster of a sandwich.

Nerves were powerful things, but the sheer amount of meats, cheeses, and vegetables that Michael could see over in Ryan’s corner, plus how fucking tired he was starting to feel, were enough to cancel those out. “Fuck yes.”

That actually got him a smile, which was better than he would’ve hoped for.

Which was a feeling that lasted all of six seconds because, as soon as he sat down in range, Ray dropped an ice pack down the back of his shirt.

“Mother _fucker_!”

Ray didn’t laugh, but he did look away to hide a smile. Michael knew better than to think he was forgiven, but it was a start. “Ice your face, or you’re gonna grow a second chin.”

Squirming to get his hands on the ice pack, Michael grimaced before pressing it against his sore jaw. “If I wasn’t so damn tired, this ice pack would be going down your fucking throat.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

Michael would’ve come up with something to say to that, but Ryan put a sandwich down in front of him and the conversation might as well not have happened at all. And that was only a little because it was awkward to try and eat a sandwich and hold an ice pack against his face at the same time.

After his jaw was uncomfortably numbed, Michael tried to subtly slip the ice pack onto his knee. He had no idea if that was gonna help, but it was probably better than nothing.

He heard the door to the garage open when he was trying to get the Doritos from Ray without tearing the bag in half. Static burst in his chest, heartbeat picking up, but he gritted his teeth and did his best not to let it show. “Dude, you’ll be okay with one less handful of Doritos, I fucking believe in you.”

“Sorry bro, my doctor said I have to eat a full bag every day to maintain my girlish figure. You don’t fuck around with that shit.”

“Your doctor’s a hack and you’re a goddamn chip hoarder.”

Weird how the rubber soles of converse on hardwood was something he could identify instantly, these days.

Gavin skidded to a stop halfway to the table, staring at them in confusion. “Michael?”

He didn’t look _too_ upset about anything, maybe a little anxious, but mostly okay. Thank fucking Christ, he was going to have enough to do damage control with Geoff and Jack as it was. “Yeah, hey. Sorry, my phone died- you _son of bitch_!” Michael snarled when Ray took advantage of his distraction to make off with the bag of Doritos to the other side of Ryan, which might as well have been fucking Guatemala for how easy it’d be for Michael to get to. “Using Ryan as a shield is cheap as fuck!”

“If I have a boyfriend who looks like this,” Ray jerked a thumb at a bemused Ryan, who was putting the last of the dishes in the dishwasher, “I’m taking advantage.”

Drying off his hands, Ryan quirked an eyebrow at Ray, “I feel like I’m being used for my body here.”

“You’re just now figuring that out?”

Gavin walking over pulled Michael’s attention from the R & R Snarkfest. He was smiling, but it was kinda fragile. “Gave us a right scare, mate.”

Michael really didn’t know what he meant by that. Didn’t know if Geoff told them all what went down, or if the fact that he’d run off, been gone for hours, and not answered his phone had been enough. Either way…

“Sorry. Left the video app open, it drained the battery like a motherfucker.”

Gavin nodded eagerly, like he wanted the explanation to be that simple. And really, it was, but Michael still felt shitty, like he was lying.

A soft sound made him glance over toward the hall, where Geoff and Jack had just walked in, then immediately look away. And then grimace. Because that looked bad, like he was mad or something.

Shoving the last of his sandwich in his mouth, he turned and gave the most casual wave he could over his shoulder. They were both staring at him like they were surprised he was actually there, so it was a safe bet that Jack, at least, knew what had happened.

Fucking fantastic.

Jack recovered first. “Hey,” he said, also aiming for casual, apparently, “everything good?”

Desperately hoping that there weren’t any cuts or bruises apparent enough for Jack to notice at the moment, Michael shrugged. “Yeah, sorry. Didn’t realize it’d died.”

‘Sorry for throwing you into a panic over me just being a little bitch about something I’m not even sure I’m mad about.’ Yeah, it was going to be better to downplay the whole thing as much as possible, at least while they were all in one place. It’d be way easier if he could just get Geoff alone.

Because Geoff was staring at him and, like most times, Michael couldn’t read the expression on his face. He looked agitated, but not mad? Anxious, maybe? He really couldn’t tell, and that hadn’t ever ended well for him.

Gavin was actually the one to make a move before things could get awkward. Looking over at Jack and Geoff, Michael could hear the grin in his voice when he said, “Dibs on the shower” and bolted down the hall toward their room, making Jack shout and take off after him.

Ray and Ryan exchanged an obvious look, then Ray grabbed the front of Ryan’s shirt, even as he turned to Michael, “I’m making an excuse and taking this one with me.”

Michael had no response for that at all, as they vanished down the hall, leaving him alone with Geoff, who started toward him.

Geoff was going to sit down and they were going to have a Talk and Michael was _not_ going to let that happen.

“Sorry for freaking out on you,” he said, bringing Geoff up short before he could reach the island.

Grimacing, he scrubbed at his hair, “No, man, I shouldn’t have just kept that without talking to you-”

“But you still have it.”

Geoff froze, but Michael wasn’t surprised. He’d known about seven seconds after bolting out the office door that Geoff wasn’t going to let the picture be thrown out. He'd never have thrown it away himself, and that wasn't going to go away just because Michael'd thrown a fit.

“Keep it.” Michael stood before Geoff could answer him, taking his plate to the trash and the ice pack to the freezer.

“You’re limping-”

Damn, he’d thought it wasn’t too obvious. “Pulled something running. Don’t tell Lindsay, she’s always on my ass about doing stretches and shit.”

“ _Michael_.”

That tone made him pause, where he’d been all ready to leave the room. When he turned, Geoff was looking at him and why the _fuck_ was the man so hard to read? The only thing he could tell was that Geoff hadn’t made him stop because of the limp, at least not only. He still wanted to _Talk_ , but that wasn’t going to happen.

They’d had to worry about his overdramatic ass way too long already. A few minutes ago, they’d been hanging out in the kitchen like normal people, that was what he wanted. He didn’t want this, didn’t want Geoff looking at him like there was some huge issue he had to get involved with.

Yeah, he was fucked up, but that was his problem. He shouldn’t have let it spill out onto the guys at all, and he was going to fucking make _sure_ that it wouldn’t anymore.

He could do this. It was hard when he was freaking out, but he could _do_ it.

“It’s fine. It’s not a big deal.”

When he said that, he meant it. The picture thing, the limp. They were fine. That was probably what made Geoff reluctantly back down.

Michael smiled at him, and it didn’t feel fake, but it didn’t feel real either.

Then he hurried into the guest room, locked the door behind him, and leaned against it.

Thank fuck that was over.


	52. Chapter 52

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in chapters, my response to finding out a scene I've been planning for a long time doesn't work quite right anymore seems to be laying facedown on the floor and groaning for a month. Anyway, I got over myself eventually, here's a thing.

They were definitely watching him over the next few days, but he only had his own fucking self to thank for that.

Well, Geoff and Jack were watching him. Gavin was kind of anxiously hovering, not too bad, but not great. Ray and Ryan were the only ones relatively calm, and they were the ones who’d seen him covered in blood, which was so damn backwards he almost wanted to point it out so everyone would quit acting so fucking weird.

It wasn’t obvious enough for that, though. Nope, no one was saying a goddamn word and it was really starting to piss him off.

That was stupid, he knew it was stupid, but he’d expected Ryan, at least, to fucking corner him at some point after covering his ass. Everything would’ve been so much worse if everyone had found out about that bruise and the only one who knew wasn’t _saying_ anything.

He wasn’t sick with nerves anymore, he just hated being on the edge of his seat and not knowing when it was fucking coming. And it _was_ coming, he was sure of that.

Part of him actually wondered if Ryan was making him wait on purpose. He wouldn’t put it past the guy. Bitch.

He made sure to hang around them all plenty over the weekend, made sure they all saw him acting normal, which was way the fuck easier after the wakeup call on Friday. Freaking out about the situation made sense, but he could at _least_ pull it together enough to freak out on his own time and not bother them.

From what he could tell, though, Jack and Geoff just found that _more_ suspicious, which, what the fuck did they even _want_ from him?

Lindsay, of course, gave him a heaping pile of shit after noticing his (almost completely gone) limp on Monday. But she also gave him some tips on how to help the pulled muscle heal faster, so maybe she wasn’t _completely_ awful.

It was also on Monday, while filming AHWU, that Michael found out that the guys were going to another convention that weekend.

Most of them, anyway.

 

* * *

 

In retrospect, Michael realized, pressing up against the wall outside the office to stay in the shade, he should have expected the guys to pull something like this.

They were well into May and he was starting to understand what Burnie meant about Texan heat. He still preferred it over Jersey cold, but stepping outside into the stifling humidity was a hell of a thing.

Still, you had to make sacrifices when you were trying to catch your boss for a private chat during work hours.

It only took Geoff a couple minutes to pull into the parking lot, park, and head toward the building with a couple of massive bags from Rudy’s. Which, okay, the smell was distracting, but Michael was _focused_.

“Geoff, what the _fuck_?”

The confusion on Geoff’s face was genuine, which honestly pissed Michael off a little. “What ‘what the fuck’?”

“Why did you fucking _tell me_ that you were all going to another convention this weekend? And leaving Ryan behind?? I don’t need a fucking babysitter.”

Geoff actually rolled his eyes. _Rolled his fucking eyes!_ “We don’t think you do, that was Ryan’s idea.”

He fucking _knew it_.

“The fact that the rest of us appreciate knowing you probably won’t die when we leave this time has nothing to-”

“Oh, kiss my fucking ass,” Michael snarled at Geoff’s innocent tone.

“Hey, between the last time we went out of town and this past Friday, I think that’s fair, dude.”

“Nothing _happened_ on Friday!” Nothing that was _his_ fault, anyway.

“Uh huh.”

Michael had never wanted to strangle someone he liked and respected before, but he was finding it hard to resist the urge.

“What’s it gonna take to make you guys fucking _trust_ me?”

He didn’t realize how loaded that question was until the words were already out there and the lot went silent.

Sweat trickled down the back of his neck and he wasn’t sure how much of it had to do with the heat and how much of it had to do with the ‘oh _shit_ ’ impulse that was flooding his system with adrenaline.

Geoff didn’t look mad or anything, at least. Sort of surprised, but not upset. Sighing, he moved both bags to one hand so he could scratch at the back of his neck. “We trust you with pretty much everything but you already.”

Michael felt his whole face scrunch up. “That’s fucking stupid.” He’d taken care of himself just fine since he was a kid.

Shrugging, Geoff started walking again. “Then I guess we’re fucking stupid.” He wrapped his free arm around Michael’s shoulders, just a bit too slow to be casual, and started pulling him in the direction of the office. “Come on, before Jack decides to eat the support room.”

Michael could’ve fought about it a bit more, probably should have, if he was being honest. Asked why, if they didn’t want to leave him by himself, they didn’t just take him too. He was the new guy, but he was still a part of Achievement Hunter, right? He could go to conventions, he could help.

But it was the first time in a while that Geoff had actually reached out to him and the last thing in the world he wanted was to pull away.

 

* * *

 

When they weren’t filming, Michael usually spent all his time editing, either the group videos or trying to stock up Rage Quits, in case he was running late with any in the future.

Editing multicam videos took a hell of a lot longer than that because of how much time had to be spent getting all the files even ready _to_ edit, so it felt like he spent just as long watching the little green bar slowly fill up as he did actually, you know, _editing_.

Which meant free time.

Usually, he went upstairs or over to the support room to fuck around with Miles, Kerry, and/or Lindsay. But, given what he’d pulled over the weekend, he stayed in the AH office to spend time with Gavin and Ray.

Which seemed like a good idea right up until it didn’t.

“Come on!” Gavin said, throwing himself back in his chair. “It’s May now, it’s hot as hell!”

“We’re going out of _town_ this weekend, Gavver.” Geoff was grinning, though. “It just makes more sense to do it next weekend.”

“Michael and Ryan will be here, though!” Gavin followed that up with whipping his head toward Michael, like he thought he’d get some kind of support.

“Hey, don’t fucking look at me, I’m staying inside in the air conditioning.” He’d rather eat glass than open up the pool, he didn’t even know _how_ to do that and he sure as shit wasn’t going to make it easier for Gavin.

He hadn’t forgotten that Gavin had bought him a fucking swimsuit. The damn thing was sitting in the dresser, under literally every other pair of pants or shorts he owned. He’d wanted to forget about the damn thing, because the last thing he wanted was to go swimming with Gavin and Ray.

Jack and Geoff were the only ones who'd really seen his scars. He wasn't even happy about _that_ , but Ryan, Gavin, Ray? Hadn’t ever seen. He wasn’t nearly as worried about Ryan’s reaction, but he didn’t want that to be part of how Ray or Gav saw him.

He wasn’t stupid enough to think he could avoid it _forever_ , especially with how gung-ho Gavin was about the whole thing, but still… maybe he could come up with something if he just had more time. He had to move out eventually, right?

“If they’re not going to use it, they shouldn’t have to open it up.” Jack was ever the voice of reason. “Besides, didn’t you want to talk about that new show?”

“Nice save,” Ray muttered, nose deep in his DS. Michael had no idea how he could focus so hard on the game _and_ follow the conversation around him, but he was impressed.

“What new show?” he asked gamely. Because he wanted to get as far away from the pool discussion as possible. Especially since his bruises hadn’t faded yet.

“Oh! Right!” Gavin turned to him with a grin that was bright enough to make him worried. “We should make a show together!”

“… what?”

“Some of your most popular Rage Quits are the ones with Gavin,” Geoff explained. “Plus, the original video from New York that got everyone so fucking excited was you two playing a game together. Having it be a regular thing just makes sense.”

“But we already do achievement guides and stuff?”

“These would be more like Lets Plays,” Jack jumped in. “If you’re cool with it, it’d be a weekly thing, like Rage Quit. But with games that would work better with two people.”

‘Cool’ was not the term Michael would use. He mostly wanted to bolt from the room, but he was getting good at stifling that urge.

Another show that couldn’t be made without him? Were these people _insane_? All evidence pointed to ‘yes’.

Great.

“The Rage Quits are good proof of concept.” Gavin reached out and nudged his leg with a foot. “C’mon, it’ll be fun!”

Still, it wasn’t like he could say ‘no’. They’d done so much for him and they wanted to pull him in even further. Who cared if the idea that he could fuck up something on a weekly basis was horrifying? He already dealt with that with Rage Quit. Mostly by making the episodes as fast as he fucking could, but still.

“Sure, why not?”

 

* * *

 

Thursday came way too fast.

The rest of the office left around noon, because they were apparently going to _California_ , of all fucking places. On the one hand, being left alone in an empty office gave him a great opportunity to record Rage Quit.

On the other, it was hard not to count the hours until the day was done.

“Alright,” he said, flopping back into the shotgun seat of the car as Ryan climbed in next to him. “Fucking lay it on me.”

Ryan gave him a look that was way too serene not to know what he was talking about. “Lay what on you?”

Jabbing a finger at him, Michael narrowed his eyes, “Don’t fucking give me that, asshole, you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

It took a long moment for Michael to recognize the look he was getting and scramble for his seatbelt. He remembered the _last_ time Ryan had decided he’d taken too long to put it on and didn’t want a repeat performance, thank you very much. His fucking heart had been through enough.

“I’m gonna assume you’re talking about your balance problems,” Ryan ventured, calm as could be, as he backed out of the parking spot and headed for the gate. “Rather than the fact that you came home covered in blood.”

“Foreheads bleed a lot,” Michael grumbled, crossing his arms and sinking lower in his seat. He was tempted to put his feet on the dash, but he wasn’t going to be _that_ asshole. He was the one who’d brought this up, after all. Maybe Ryan had planned that too.

… He might be getting paranoid.

“So are we gonna keep talking around it, or are you just going to admit you’ve been fighting?” Ryan was still so fucking calm, like they were talking about something chill, like work, or the weather.

It made things a little easier.

Michael couldn’t look at him, had to look out the window, at the sun that was still high in the sky, bearing down on them. But it was still easier than it would’ve been before for him to say, “Does it count as admitting something if you already know?”

He startled a little when a large hand landed on the back of his head. It didn’t pull away, though, just smoothed down his hair, fingers combing through the curls a bit.

The memory of that second night after he’d come to stay with the guys came rushing back so intensely he had to swallow hard.

“Maybe not.” Ryan drew his hand back to merge into traffic. “But it worked? Biking didn’t, running didn’t, but fighting did?”

Nevermind, there was no such thing as paranoid when it came to this guy.

“Yeah. It worked.”

“Are you going to stop?”

His heart lurched in his chest. Because wasn’t that a million-dollar question? He’d been doing okay this last week, so focused on the guys that he hadn’t had a chance to worry about it, but he could feel it still, it was still there. If it was going to go away, it was taking its fucking time.

“I don’t- I can’t-” He bit down on the inside of his mouth, frustrated with how hard it was to find the right words without sounding like a crazy person.

It was quiet for the rest of the drive. Not a tense kind of quiet, just silence as they made their way back to the house. Ryan didn’t seem like he was waiting on Michael to get it right, didn’t seem like he was waiting to say something himself either.

Finally, after pulling into the garage, he asked, “What if there was an alternative?”

Michael gave him a long look. “What sort of alternative?”

“Come on,” Ryan pushed the car door open. “I’ll show you.”

Ryan led him through the dark house, down the hall, through the living room, stopping at the door right across from the guest room.

Right. There was a basement. He’d actually forgotten that, despite the fact that he saw the door literally every day.

He gave Ryan a deeply skeptical look as the taller man opened the door and descended the pitch black stairs. “Is your alternative to kill me in the basement?” He called down. “I’m not following you into your fucking sex dungeon, Haywood!”

There must’ve been a switch down there, because a dim light flickered on just enough that Michael could see the concrete floor at the bottom of the stairs and Ryan’s _look_ as he poked his head back into the staircase.

“A basement is a terrible place for a sex dungeon. It’s cold all the time.”

“That’s real fucking convincing.”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “It’s not a sex dungeon. Happy? Now get your ass down here.”

Reluctantly, Michael stepped down into the stairwell, wishing he could blame his nerves on literally anything but what was happening. It was no big deal, it was _Ryan_. But even fucking Sir Telepathy could get shit wrong sometimes. And Michael didn’t want that shit to be him.

When he reached the bottom of the steps, the cold from the concrete seeped up through his socks, so that was a point for Ryan telling the truth.

Most of the unfinished basement was stuffed full of boxes and furniture that hadn’t made its way upstairs, but it had all been pushed against the far wall to open up enough space for a couple of thick red gym mats that took up a lot of the available concrete. An honest to god punching bag was suspended from the ceiling a little away from them and Michael was starting to get an idea of where this was going.

Still, he had to ask, “What’s this?”

Ryan shrugged, crossing his arms. “The alternative. I used to be really into martial arts back in the day, I’ve been meaning to get back into it. Practicing like this might help you too.”

There was a weird rushing sound in Michael’s ears, like blood was trying to escape out of them. “You want to teach me martial arts? Are you fucking crazy? Am I not dangerous enough for you already?”

What with the fact that he sometimes _lost control of his fucking body_ and hurt people, he wouldn’t have thought Ryan would want to give him more ammo, but hey, what did he know?

“I told you, I’m not afraid of you, Michael.”

“Motherfucker, what about those reflexes you talked about before? I didn’t mean to attack you last time, I don’t- if I can’t control myself, what then? What if I take it too fucking far- get out of control?”

“Hey,” it wasn’t until Ryan’s voice shifted to something lower and softer that Michael realized he’d been backing toward the stairs. “If you’re doing something like that, if you lose track of where you are, I’m confident I can take you down. If you’re out of control, I’m not gonna let you hurt me or anybody else.”

That was… maybe a little better. But still. “No fucking kid gloves.”

“I’ll knock you on your ass and sit on you if I have to.”

Michael took a deep breath. Then three more. If he was going to even _think_ about this, he had to calm the fuck down. “What did you have in mind?”

“Clearly you can fight. But knowing how to throw a punch or a kick without pulling something can’t hurt.” He gave Michael’s recently-healed knee a pointed look. “Plus the easiest ways to take someone down _besides_ going for the groin. We can also spar- don’t worry, we’ll be careful.” Smiling a little, he shrugged. “Jack suggested we get boxing gloves or something. Doesn’t really work for this, and there’s no boxing gloves in a real fight, but we can take some precautions down here.” He nudged at the mat with a socked foot.

That sounded like, maybe, in some distant, ideal future, it could be… fun. And if Ryan was right, and it was a good alternative to a real fight, he wouldn’t have to risk coming back to the house with a black eye and freaking everyone out again if he fucked up one day.

And part of him, a quiet part he couldn’t bring himself to snuff out, liked the idea of hanging out with Ryan. All the guys were great, but it was hard to get one-on-one time with anybody. But no one ever came down to the basement. As far as he knew, no one had the whole time he’d lived with them, except obviously Ryan, to set all this up.

Come to think of it, when had he even done that?

Ryan was still staring at him, waiting for some kind of response.

Swallowing, he managed, “I can’t promise this’ll work.”

Lips twitching up, Ryan spread his hands. “Me neither. What do you say we give it a shot anyway?”

It wasn’t a secret or anything, the other guys knew, Ryan said he’d talked to Jack about it. So, even if they were crazy to trust him with this, it was okay with them. Maybe he could do this. Stay at the house with Ryan and still burn through the static. Not scare the guys. If nothing else, didn’t he owe it to them to at least _try_?

“… yeah, okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me at perpetual-misperception.tumblr.com


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